Generation J [Hardcover]

Lisa Schiffman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 18, 1999

"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 in religion and a personal history of skepticism. Call us a bunch of searchers. Call us post-Holocaust Jews. Call us Generation J."

Generation J is the ambivalent generation: unaffiliated seekers, men and women who have grown up questioning the bounds of organized religion. Lisa Schiffman is one of these seekers, and Generation J chronicles her journey through the contradictory landscape of Jewish identity. Moving from the personal to the universal, from autobiography to anthropology, from laughter to tears, Schiffman shows us the many ways in which one can be religious.

Whether dipping into a ritual bath, getting henna-tattooed with the Star of David, unravelling the mysteries of the kabbalah, or confronting what Jewish tradition has to say about gay marriage, Schiffman reveals the conflicts of meaning and connection common to all who try to chart their own spiritual path. And, through it all, with humor and sensitivity, she confronts the reasons for her own quest and begins to untangle some of the thorniest questions about identity, community, and religion in America today.

This engaging exploration of what it means to be Jewish is every bit as much a fascinating tour of the varieties of contemporary Jewish practice as it is an unusual personal quest. Smart, funny, and provocative, Schiffman brilliantly explores the problems and possibilities facing any spiritual seeker today.

 

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Generation J is a beautifully written, constantly courageous, hip, wise memoir by a young woman determined to figure out what it means to be Jewish. Lisa Schiffman, who grew up in the mostly Christian community of Levittown, New Jersey, writes of her own alienated adolescence: "We were a generation of Jews who'd grown up on television, with Barbie, with rhinoplasty as a way of life. Assimilation wasn't something we strove for; it was the condition into which we were born." Feeling unmoored in early adulthood, Schiffman begins a search for the essence of the Jewish identity she feels exiled from. She undertakes experiments such as eating nonkosher food every day for a week, and gently confronting her parents' ignorance of their own religion. Oddly, her greatest religious epiphany comes from the experience of getting a henna tattoo--a vine across her torso, with the Star of David at the end. The tattoo sets off what she calls, elsewhere in the book, "a big think-through": "There is the vine. There is me. There's Judaism, the religion of paradox and reconciliation. I'll learn from it what I can. I'll sort out my own conflicted truths. I refuse to reject myself--any part. I no longer choose to exile." --Michael Joseph Gross

From Publishers Weekly

Although positioned as emblematic of a generation of searching, post-Holocaust Jews, this memoir is actually the more specific storyAat once engaging and exasperatingAof a thirty-something Jewish woman attempting to reconsider her assimilation. A former editor at the San Francisco Review of Books, Schiffman presents a spiritual journey that has a Northern Californian cast: she attends a workshop on Judaism and psychology, talks with Rodger Kamenetz (author of The Jew in the Lotus), and interviews Rabbi Lew, who headed the Berkeley Zen center before returning to conservative Judaism. Having been raised in near-complete ignorance of her religion, Schiffman speculates about how Judaism might benefit from a new "brand" identity and voices amazement at the plethora of kosher supermarket products. On the other hand, she knows enough about anthropology to conclude that she should look outside that discipline for insights, since its major theorists dismiss the spiritual. Ultimately, Schiffman finds a congenial rabbi who validates her piecemeal approach to Judaism, and she decides to start reading the Torah with a friend. It's unfortunate that Schiffman seems to have operated in a vacuum, oblivious to similar quests that regularly appear in the Jewish press. When she ends her book by getting a temporary Star of David tattoo, it's not surprising that she doesn't cite the biblical prohibition against indelible tattoos nor the post-concentration camp implication of tattooing. (Sept.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 176 pages
• Publisher: HarperOne; First Edition edition (August 18, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0062515772
• ISBN-13: 978-0062515773
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,423,407 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Provocative, warm, personal, December 16, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Generation J (Hardcover)

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.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Remember While Reading This is Her Personal Story, August 19, 2002

By 

Songbird (CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Generation J (Paperback)

I have read reviews on this book and people say they are disappointed because they expected to read a deeper book about Judaism in the generation she is describing. However, she says she is keeping field notes on *her* personal journey. Right away this gave me a heads up that this book is not intended to be a deep study of Judaism at a particular generation or moment in time so I would not give the book a poor recommendation for not delivering expectations it never was intended to do. The author is raised by atheists, married a Christian and is a "non practicing" Jewish woman wanting to discover her own Jewish heritage. Her path might be very different from those who had a Jewish education, (she did not have this benefit), fell away from Judaism and are seeking to return. That being said I will review the book as it is written. The author seems concerned about the small Jewish population in the United States and the rate of intermarriage. This is good information for people to know. Yet she herself chose to intermarry yet does not want to be assimilated and erase Judaism from her life. I think it is brave and honest to admit some ambivilance about growing up Jewish in a predominantly Christian culture. Why? Because of anti-semetism. I myself was called "Christ killer" while growing up and this was in a sophisticated metropolitan area so I can understand this Some of her actions on her path to discover Judaism are bizarre but she is writing about her experiences, not mine. One doesn't judge a book on the author's actions, but the merit of its writing. Therefore it is a pretty good read. I am happy that she became proud of being Jewish, however following through with Jewish studies, finding a rabbi to guide her would have made me happier.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a must read, January 6, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Generation J (Hardcover)

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!