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"Finding a Spiritual Home: How a New Generation of Jews Can Transform the American Synagogue"
by Sidney Schwarz
"Finding a Spiritual Home" promises to explain "how a new generation of Jews can
transform the American synagogue." The book delivers on this promise by
describing the lives of four thriving synagogues, whose theological orientations
range from Reform to Orthodox. Undoubtedly, "Finding a Spiritual Home" addresses
some burning questions about the future of American Judaism: fully 35 percent of
ethnic Jews no longer identify themselves with Judaism, author Sidney Schwarz
writes. The book begins with a historical overview of synagogue life in America,
then describes the spiritual needs that various generations of American
Jews experience today, and finally offers a prescription for regeneration of
synagogue life.
Throughout the book, Schwarz's arguments expertly interweave narratives of
individual and communal religious life, taken from the four synagogues in whose
innovations Schwarz finds hope for American Judaism. These religious communities
have attracted large numbers of worshipers with programs that seem both radical
and commonsensible--"establishing public service opportunities such as a Jewish
version of Habitat for Humanity," for instance, or encouraging worshipers to
write their own prayer books. Schwarz carefully describes the impact such
innovations have on synagogue members, citing interviews with worshipers whose
enthusiasm jumps off the page: "The Judaism I live is about choosing life," one
says. His book will likely inspire more American Jews to make the same choice.
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"Coming Home To Jerusalem: A Personal Journey"
by Wendy Orange
"Coming Home to Jerusalem: A Personal Journey" is an intelligent, entertaining,
politically astute memoir by Wendy Orange, who, from 1991 to 1997, was the
Mideast correspondent for Tikkun, a leading American Jewish magazine. One autumn
1990 morning in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Orange realized that she would never
feel at home where she lived--a feeling that she compared to "the claustrophobic
awareness that you've just married the wrong person." Several months later, she
realized that she was homesick for a place she had never been: while watching
CNN reports from Jerusalem at the outbreak of the gulf war, she was struck with
an awareness that "the Israelis on the streets ... all felt familiar. They
looked and dressed like me and my friends, were the same age, had the same
verbal intonations as they spoke." Shortly thereafter, Orange visited Israel.
Not long after that first visit, she packed eight cardboard boxes, left her job,
and took her young daughter, Eliza, with her to Jerusalem, for what she
imagined would be forever.
The story that follows, "Coming Home to Jerusalem," is a tightly plotted play in
a "theatre of incongruous, gruff, sexy, close-minded, religious, secular, cruel,
funny, and excitable characters." Along the way, Orange offers plenty of insight
on the political and religious conflicts that dominated Jerusalem's life during
her time there. But the real strength of this book is its sprawling
constellation of character studies of Holocaust survivors, famous writers,
failed artists, politically elite people, and a cab driver with whom Orange
falls in love. "Coming Home to Jerusalem" is essentially a travelogue, and it
does what good travel writing should--it makes you want to go.
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"At Memory's Edge: After-Images of the Holocaust in Contemporary Art and Architecture"
by James E. Young
"At Memory's Edge" is an ambitious, provocative collection of essays on topics
ranging from Art Spiegelman's "Maus" books to, most notably, the Berlin
Holocaust Memorial. Author James E. Young, an American professor of English and
Judaic Studies, was the only foreigner and the only Jew on the committee that
selected the design for the German memorial. His behind-the-scenes account of
this project's development offers sophisticated answers to some very difficult
questions. Young doggedly asks how Berlin can remember a group of people who are
no longer at home there, and how Germany can--or should--remember the
extermination of Jews once committed in that nation's name. The author's answers
to such questions may appear excessively dogmatic to some readers. Early in the
book, for example, Young asserts that "memory-work about the Holocaust cannot,
must not, be redemptive in any fashion." But his rationale for such sweeping
pronouncements is persuasive. The book is also lavishly illustrated with
photographs and architectural drawings that will be a great value to readers who
accept the challenge that Young has assumed: "the task of contemplating how to
understand a formative historical tragedy of which firsthand memory is rapidly
fading."
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