Reviews
"Abrams, a writer on medical subjects, here offers a bracing and fascinating anthology that includes writers as various as Alan Dershowitz, Anita Diamant, Golda Meir, and George Washington on the various meanings of the Jewish experience in America. By no means do these writers speak with a single voice-but then, dialogue is a crucial part of the Jewish tradition. This is not always comfortable reading, as writers confront the Holocaust, anti-Semitism, and the controversy surrounding the identity of modern Israel-which is also as it should be. Abrams has created a fine and compulsively readable collection, illuminating for Jews and non-Jews alike."- Library Journal "Abrams crafts a portrait of Jewish experience, identity, religion, and culture through the words and eyes of contemporary thinkers. Though she includes traditional biblical and Talmudic sources, the strength of this anthology is its focus on 20th-century voices, from Elie Wiesel and Golda Meir to Woody Allen and Letty Cottin Pogrebin . . . Abrams [also] reproduces her own path back to Judaism, attained partially through the guidance of books, rabbis, and teachers. This anthology, too, may well lead readers Jewish and non-Jewish to deepen their study of the rich resources of Judaism."- Publishers Weekly, "Abrams, a writer on medical subjects, here offers a bracing and fascinating anthology that includes writers as various as Alan Dershowitz, Anita Diamant, Golda Meir, and George Washington on the various meanings of the Jewish experience in America. By no means do these writers speak with a single voice-but then, dialogue is a crucial part of the Jewish tradition. This is not always comfortable reading, as writers confront the Holocaust, anti-Semitism, and the controversy surrounding the identity of modern Israel-which is also as it should be. Abrams has created a fine and compulsively readable collection, illuminating for Jews and non-Jews alike."-Library Journal "Abrams crafts a portrait of Jewish experience, identity, religion, and culture through the words and eyes of contemporary thinkers. Though she includes traditional biblical and Talmudic sources, the strength of this anthology is its focus on 20th-century voices, from Elie Wiesel and Golda Meir to Woody Allen and Letty Cottin Pogrebin . . . Abrams [also] reproduces her own path back to Judaism, attained partially through the guidance of books, rabbis, and teachers. This anthology, too, may well lead readers Jewish and non-Jewish to deepen their study of the rich resources of Judaism."-Publishers Weekly
