Customer Reviews

Chicken Soup with Chopsticks: A Jew's Struggle for Truth in an Interfaith Relationship

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
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This book is tasty!!! Just like both Chinese and Jewish food. The author Jack Botwinik has the ability to really bring you personally right into his struggle, as you are truly there with them in their journey. I felt that I actually heared the author as well as all the other characters speaking to me. Like I really got to know them, and I could not put the book down as I was so excited to see what would end up happening. I learned many things about Judaism, Chinese culture, mysticism, the conversion process, relationships and dating, other religions and philosophies, and life in general. All on a very personal level.

Thanks Jack for a GREAT read and for bringing me into your life!

This is truly Botwinik's story; his girlfriend (now wife) Belinda (now Bina Ester) appears only in glimpses, but although it is ostensibly a conversion story, it is more a fascinating tale of Botwinik's own "Baal Teshuvah" journey towards traditionally observant Judaism.

This is a journey I've taken myself, so can definitely relate to the themes in the book... and the settings, too, are familiar from my own hours across the table from the central Bais Din which oversees conversions here in Toronto.

Botwinik is honest to the extreme, and the book is written with great clarity, which sometimes gives it an overly introspective (read: navelgazing) tone.

Nevertheless, this would be a helpful book for anyone thinking they may land on on either side of the interdating-to-frum-Jew (frum = religious) or non-Jew-to-frum-Jew coin.

This is NOT the book I would give to somebody in an interfaith relationship to convince a partner to convert (what would I offer? Maybe Dennis Prager's Nine Questions or Kelemen's Permission to Believe). This is not even a book I would suggest giving to non-Jewish or non-religious friends or family to explain religious transitions in one's own life (for that, I'd recommend a heartfelt personal letter!).

This book presupposes a level of understanding and agreement on the part of the reader which makes it just right for exactly the right audience... and kinda wrong for the wrong audience. Hard to describe, but if you suspect yourself are on the derech (way, ie towards Torah observance), this book may prove very helpful, in part for its glimpses of the nitty gritty of the bais din conversion process.

I would have been happier with more chopsticks and less chicken soup - as a born-Jewish Baalas Teshuvah, I already *know* the chicken soup stuff! :-) But this book still has its place on many bookshelves... I hope it finds its way to yours.

This book is tasty!!! Just like both Chinese and Jewish food. The author Jack Botwinik has the ability to really bring you personally right into his struggle, as you are truly there with them in their journey. I felt that I actually heared the author as well as all the other characters speaking to me. Like I really got to know them, and I could not put the book down as I was so excited to see what would end up happening. I learned many things about Judaism, Chinese culture, mysticism, the conversion process, relationships and dating, other religions and philosophies, and life in general. All on a very personal level.

Thanks Jack for a GREAT read and for bringing me into your life!

Book definitely sparked my interest in Jusdaism as a potential system for raising my own children in the way I had wanted to especially regarding dating & choosing a lifelong soul mate.
What also interested me was the way Purity of speech is explained by the author. I'm struggling with this all the time in terms of words spoken in anger to loved ones. I feel that Purity of speech as explained will give me grounded / logical / easier to follow method to control myself when in anger since I am internalizing the understanding that these angry words once spoken can harm everyone who hears it & the harm done cannot be undone no matter how sincerly sorry I can be afterwards.

As a result of reading the book, it made me interested in reading more about the Judaism system & how it can apply to my daily life to lead a more meaningful life. I am not looking for conversion since I'm a happy Buddhist of Chinese origin but to undertand the precepts/laws and how this can be systematically applied to resolve daily problems & bring spiritual growth.

While I enjoyed this book, someone who does not know a lot about Judaism may not like it.
The author could have presented the story in a more flowing manner. While I think the story went in chronological order the chapters could have had actual dates on them

I couldn't put it down from start to finish. The human journey within is so easily identifiable, whether you're affiliated or non-affiliated to a religion, everyone will benefit from its words of wisdom.

The road to orthodoxy can be paved with strong, possibly surprising motivations: a new baby, a new wife. In "The Bamboo Cradle: A Jewish Father's Story," Avraham Schwartzbaum, a not particularly religious Jew, became more and more religious following his adoption of a Taiwanese baby girl and his desire to make her fully Jewish. Now, Jack Botinik makes a similar journey, as he delves deeper and deeper into religious tradition and practices triggered by his desire for the conversion of his Chinese girlfriend.
I spite of the glib title, this is really a serious, often self-indulgent work of a young man's religious journey. While one might expect the focus of the work to be on secular Belinda (Hang-Yee) and her transformation into Orthodox Bina Esther, Jack concentrates on himself, making only occasional references to her interior struggles and studies. So much is she the catalyst, that one must conclude Jack would have become orthodox even if she had not converted, permitting their ultimate wedding.
We see the exterior of Bina's struggle, through Jack's eyes, while dissecting each step he takes. The result is a work too much about Jack and far too little about Bina, whose voice is finally heard in a far-too-brief, three-page afterward.

Over 50% of American Jews intermarry. In an effort to counter the cultural assimilation arising from interfaith relationships, Rabbis, community leaders, and family members struggle to educate Jewish men and women of what the consequent issues of a mixed marriage will invoke ranging from pressure from a spouse to convert, to keeping kosher, to circumcision of newborn males, to raising children as Jewish, to avoiding family gatherings to the emotional pain of a gentile spouse. Chicken Soup With Chopsticks: A Jew's Struggle For Truth In An Interfaith Relationship by Jack Botwinik is a personal example of one man's efforts within the framework of his own interfaith courtship and marriage to a Chinese woman and how the two of them dealt with the unfolding consequences of their interfaith relationship. An account of candor, insight, reflection, and experience, also available in a hardcover edition, Chicken Soup With Chopsticks is a unique and thoroughly "reader friendly" contribution to the growing library of books on the subject of contemporary Judaism and Interfaith Marriage.

Jack Botwinik recounts an impressive exploratory adventure of religious traditions that few would undertake. And his joint journey with Hong Kong born girlfriend to a thoroughly considered destiny of Jewish conversion and orthodox lifestyle demonstrates dedication to his convictions.

Yet for all his claims of open exploration, one gets the sense that his journey had a predetermined destination. While this is Mr. Botwinik's life story, and how he chooses to live is his own concern, there would be more revelatory power in the story if he had started life as a secular Jew and arrived after his examination of world religions as a devout Sikh (for example) rather than an orthodox Jew. The claims that Belinda resolutely insisted that her conversion to Judaism was similarly the result of internal conviction, born not of a relationship with a Jew undergoing a journey toward orthodoxy, but rather due to her own research and introspection, similarly begs credulity.

My criticism is not to take anything away from the sincerity with which Mr. & Mrs. Botwinik conduct their lives as orthodox Jews. Rather, it has to do with the suspect self-delusional claims that they undertook a totally open-ended journey of religious exploration and arrived not too far from where they started, convinced that they had discovered the ultimate expression of religious conviction. I'm Jewish myself, so my incredulity is not because they may have disrespected my faith.

I do not ascribe to the multi-culturalist, moral relativist belief that every social structure and belief system carries equal value. Nonetheless, I don't accept the implicit claims of ultimate ethical superiority of the Jewish tradition, that Jews cannot be informed by the experiences of other faiths. And that, to my mind, is the conclusion that Mr. Botwinik must have made, in choosing an absolute adherence to Jewish orthodoxy to the exclusion of other faiths.