ua,
ono"

Personal testimonies about
the search for faith
crowd bookstore shelves.

SAN D EE B RAWARS KY
Special to The Jewish News

T

he road less traveled is get-
ting crowded. Not only are
large numbers of Jews -
embarking on spiritual
journeys, but many are writing about
them, in full candor. The inner adven-
ture story might be the Jewish book of
the moment.
While bookstores are overflowing
with memoirs of every stripe — the
musings of people from all back-
grounds, reflecting on remarkable
families, abuse and dysfunction,
divorce, relationships — Jewish writ-
ers seem to be revealing the details of
their spiritual lives: The relationship
frequently examined is that with God.
Over the centuries, many Jews have
reported on their mystical experiences,
from Maimonides to the Vilna Gaon
to the Baal Shem Tov (these accounts
are collected in Jewish Mystical
Testimonies edited by Louis Jacobs).
But in contemporary times, the abun-
dance of Jewish spiritual memoirs is a
new trend.
These books signal the emergence
of a new vocabulary, where talk about
God's presence is natural, and words
like sacred, redemption and transcen-

3/12
1999

86 Detroit Jewish News

dence, and compounds like Godtalk
and Godwrestling, are used with ease.
It's a time of Big Questions, and
Jewish writers are finding many
answers.
"Each path, each book, is so differ-
ent. I want to know where the authors
came from," says Carolyn Starman
Hessel, executive director of the Jewish
Book Council. "What was the spark?
What lit the match?"
For some writers, the direction of
their path is an upward spiral, return-
ing to the place they began in Jewish
life, but at a higher level. Others make
their way to an altogether different
spot on the Jewish spectrum, while
some discover it anew.
Included among the most recent
titles are Rabbi Tirzah Firestone (With
Roots in Heaven), who becomes the
rabbi of a Jewish Renewal congrega-
tion; David Klinghoffer ( The Lord
Will Gather Me In), who journeys to
Orthodoxy; Lee Meyerhoff Hendler
( The Year Mom Got Religion), who
embraces a Conservative way of life
with increasing observance; and
Roberta Israeloff (Kindling the Flame),
who finds a home in
Reconstructionism. These traveler's
tales are brave books. For each writer,
the quest continues.

Why so many books? And why

now? Publishing executives point to

the confluence of several trends: the
boom in memoirs, growing interest in
things spiritual and a continued inter-
est in Judaism. "The baby boomers are
getting older and worrying about their
souls," says Stuart Matlins, publisher
of Jewish Lights.
He explains that it's only recently
that they've received dozens of propos-
als for spiritual memoirs. "I think that
more people are in touch with the
spiritual struggle in their own lives,
more willing to talk about it now that
they realize they're not alone."
"Our generation seems to be redis-
covering Judaism, like miners digging
for sources," says Arthur Kurzweil,
vice-president of Jason Aronson. He
believes the challenge is how to inte-
grate materials like newly translated
texts into our lives in a creative and
nourishing way. People are looking to
memoirs to find examples of others
who have worked through that kind
of integration."
Claire Wachtel, an executive editor
at Morrow, points to the coming of the
millennium as a possible reason for the
rush to write these books. She relates
the current growing interest in spiritual
memoirs to the tradition of storytelling.

For many years, the classic stories
Jews told were about the world of their
grandparents, the rags to riches tales of
immigrants filled with funny and con-
tentious characters, then Holocaust
stories and suburban stories. Now,
people are telling compelling stories of
their interior journeys. "People need
stories," she says, referring to the tellers
and the listeners.
For Rabbi Tirzah Firestone, writing
With Roots in Heaven (Dutton;
$24.95) — a passionate account in
which she details her rejection of her
Orthodox upbringing, her search for
meaning among Eastern religions and
New Age philosophies, her marriage to
a Christian minister, her discovery of
the "vast and compassionate" quality of
Judaism and her decision to study with
Rabbi Zalman Schacter-Shalomi to
become a rabbi — was a response to a
deep-felt calling to tell her story.
Now divorced and engaged to be
married to a Jewish man, she speaks of
feeling "a fire inside her soul," to share
"her adventures as well as mistakes."
Rabbi Firestone's energy and
warmth infuse the text. A psychother-
apist, she says writing so personally is
much more of a "life-giving process"
than writing more distantly about the
wisdom she has distilled from