Judaism
“Surprised by God:” On Falling in Love with Religious Law
Danya Ruttenberg’s memoir, Surprised by God: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Religion, about how she grew from an athiest-Jewish high schooler to an observant-Jewish 30-something rabbi is really fantastic: well-written, engaging, skating that line between the personal and the universal with surprising grace. While reading it, I had to restrain myself from [...]
10Sep2008 | Andrea Useem | 1 comment | Continued
When God Goes Bad: Shalom Auslander’s Memoir of Rotten Religion
Here’s something I don’t like doing: Writing frankly about my own life. Here’s something I love doing: Reading other people write frankly about their lives. As a result, I love Shalom Auslander’s book, Foreskin’s Lament, in which he writes with a hilarious, tragic clarity about his life as a recovering Orthodox Jew.
Luckily, Auslander is funny [...]
The Most Mysterious Haggadah: Q+A with “People of the Book” author Geraldine Brooks
A sweeping narrative set in multiple locations with a myriad cast of characters, People of the Book, a novel by Pulitzer-prize winning author Geraldine Brooks, is held together by one thing – a powerful fascination with a deceptively tattered book. The maxim “don’t judge a book by its cover” couldn’t be more applicable as the [...]
24Apr2008 | Shona Crabtree | 7 comments | ContinuedHospital Reading: America’s Most Religious College Students
This weekend ReligionWriter found herself at an area hospital, watching over her one-year-old son, Moses, who was suffering from respiratory problems (he’s better now, and we’re both home, thank you.) But there’s nothing like being captive in a strange, somewhat scary place to make a book seem like a treasured escape. While rocking Moses to [...]
10Dec2007 | Andrea Useem | 1 comment | ContinuedCNN’s “God’s Warriors:” Good Watching, But the Book Is Better
When ReligionWriter’s husband first saw a press copy of CNN’s new six-hour documentary, “God’s Warriors,” lying around the house, he said he looked forward to learning about famous heroes and soldiers in the Jewish, Muslim and Christian traditions.
He was disappointed, then, when the first segment, “God’s Jewish Warriors,” which will air next Tuesday, Aug. 21, [...]