THE HUMAN SCALE, by Lawrence Wright
There is a verse in the Talmud that reads “Whoever saves a single life is considered by scripture to have saved the world.” This assertion is echoed in Islam. In the Quran, it is written, “If anyone saves a life, it shall be as though he had saved the lives of all mankind.”
This parity should come as no surprise. Jews and Muslims are, in Islamic terms, ahl al-kitab, or “people of the book.” From the omnipotence of the one God to the sanctity of one life, Judaism and Islam distill much of the world’s complexity into this singular, absolute unit.
The loss of a single life — the murder of Jacob Weingarten, an Israeli police chief in a West Bank settlement — sets in motion Lawrence Wright’s gripping new novel, “The Human…