Generation J

By Lisa Schiffman

Book Overview

I'm not alone. I am part of a generation of fragmented Jews. We're in a kind of limbo. We're suspended between young adulthood and middle age, between Judaism and atheism, between a desire to believe... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0062515772
• ISBN13: 9780062515773
• Release Date: August 1999
• Publisher: HarperOne
• Length: 166 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.7" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

A Great Insight into the Modern Jewish Mind

This text follow's Lisa's search for what it actually means to be "a Jew." Great for Jews and non-Jews alike, it shows what being Jewish means to different people from different generations. Told in narrative style, it is an easy and interesting read.

This is well worth reading

She voices so many thoughts I have had that I didn't have a name for. I thought this book was just terrific and bravo for having the courage to put these thoughts out there. It helped this gay jewish boy!

a must read

If you have ever dated someone not Jewish, if you have ever wondered what other sources of spirituality might be out there, if you have ever felt a passing pang of guilt for eating a cheezeburger, if you have ever wondered what being Jewish was supposed to mean in modern times, if you have ever felt turned away from Judaism because of it's seemingly complicated, contradictory, argumentative, rigid idiosyncracies, you MUST read this book. Lisa Schiffman gives you permission to be confused, to embrace your Jewish Identity Crisis. She had me laughing out loud and jumping out of my skin at the similarities between her writing and experiences and the conversations in my head over the course of my adult years. Read it, highlight it, makes notes in the margin, recite passages out loud to your family and friends. Good luck on your journey!

An inspiring journey

This journal through the author's own Jewish journey provides a through-provoking and easy to read account of a young Jewish woman's struggle to understand the basis of who she is. In search of her Jewish self, Lisa Schiffman's unique perspective as a social anthropologist adds a demension to this book that moves well beyond the anecdotal. Her agressive approach to dissect her identity and find her place in the world is inspiring -- Lisa Schiffman is a real go-getter.

Provocative, warm, personal

This is one of the best books I have read this year. The author (an east coast, inter-married Jewish writer, now living in the bay area) captures perfectly the confusion, effort, and humor of trying to make inroads with an identity that is and is not your own. The anecdotes and research about contemporary American Jewish life are interesting and memorable. However, the book rings true not just as a personal journey through the most conflicted aspects of contemporary Jewish life, but as an open-minded and open-ended conversation about how to take ownership of the aspects of ourselves we avoid in childhood, only to find we need them later.