An Unusual Look at What It Means to Be Jewish

“It’s hard being a Jew,” or so goes a saying that is sometimes uttered as a cry of pain and sometimes as a punch line to a Jewish joke. The saying helps to explain why my own library includes a whole shelf of books about how to be a Jew, ranging from the well-thumbed copy of “Jewish Holidays and Festivals,” first published in 1940 and given to my wife by her beloved grandfather when she was still a toddler in 1953, to the latest “egalitarian” prayer book that was put into service only last year at my synagogue, where we now address God in strictly gender-neutral terms.

Precisely because Judaism is a participatory faith, “how-to” books go back a couple of thousand years in Jewish tradition; portions of the Bible itself and much of the Talmud can be seen as early examples of the genre.

Orthodoxy is the most demanding branch of Judaism, but all of the denominations require a certain level of competence to take part in both home-based observances such as the Sabbath or the Passover Seder and the prayer services that take place in the synagogue.

The most recent addition to our shelf of Jewish how-to books is Ari L. Goldman’s “Being Jewish,” an open-minded and affirming survey of Jewish religious practice in our own troubled times. Goldman ranges from birth rituals to funeral rites and touches on what he characterizes as “the major milestones of the Jewish calendar”--the fast days and festivals, both major and minor--as well as “the rhythm of the Jewish day” as expressed in the cycle of prayer and ritual. Although it is addressed to a Jewish readership, “Being Jewish” allows both Jews and non-Jews to see the rewards and challenges of being Jewish today.

A former reporter for the New York Times and a professor of journalism at Columbia University, Goldman brings to his new book the hard edge that characterized his earlier memoir, “The Search for God at Harvard.” At the same time, he clearly wants to engage in a “rethinking and reexamination of Jewish life” that began on a sabbatical in Jerusalem in 1997.

“While Orthodoxy is my home, I believe that Judaism can and should be celebrated in a variety of ways,” he writes. “I am that rare breed: an Orthodox pluralist, someone who believes that the right answer for me is not the answer for everyone.”

Indeed, Goldman’s ecumenical approach to Judaism sets “Being Jewish” apart from many other books on the same subject, which are most often the work of rabbis with allegiance to a specific movement in religious Judaism: Orthodox, Conservative, Reform or Reconstructionist. To his credit, Goldman seeks to encompass the whole range of Jewish belief and practice and to honor “how different Jews have found meaning, richness and variety in the tradition and made it their own.”

For observant Jews, God is in the details of prayer and ritual, and much of Goldman’s book is focused on the observance of mitzvot (commandments) that instruct a pious Jew on every aspect of life, from rising in the morning to lying down at night, from the ritual of circumcision eight days after birth to the washing and wrapping of a corpse before burial.

But he also offers new ways of understanding the contending theologies of Judaism as they are expressed in the beliefs and practices of its four principal movements. “The Orthodox, it might be argued, see God as Father, demanding and exacting,” he proposes. “For the Reform, God is Mother, whose love is unconditional. The Conservatives see God as a lover. According to this approach, Jews are in a partnership in which God listens and we listen. The Reconstructionists do not see God as a noun at all, but as a verb.”

Goldman can’t restrain himself from pointing out the ironies and idiosyncrasies of modern Jewish practice, such as it is. For example, he introduces us to a Jewish couple who express their Jewishness by refraining from bacon and shellfish on the Sabbath, and a Jewish woman who finds herself unable to fast on Yom Kippur and so “spends the day with a fast of another kind: She doesn’t speak for 25 hours.”

But, more often, he takes a kind and compassionate approach to the reader by offering what he calls “a ‘toolbox’ of Jewish ritual that I hope readers will open, explore and experiment with.”

“I say, start simple,” he exhorts. “Light a candle, visit a synagogue, attend a Seder, celebrate life in a Jewish way.”

Much of what Goldman reveals about traditional Judaism will be deeply unfamiliar to the nonobservant Jews making up the majority of the Jewish population in America today. “There are 6 million Jews in America,” he quotes one rabbi as saying, “and 6 million Judaisms.” But that’s precisely why Goldman resolved to write yet another book on being Jewish.

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Jonathan Kirsch is the author of “The Harlot by the Side of the Road” and, most recently, “King David: The Real Life of the Man Who Ruled Israel.”