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Girl Meets God: A Memoir

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After reading Ms. Winner's book, GIRL MEETS GOD, I felt a great sense of kinship. I, like Ms. Winner, was an Orthodox Jew. In fact I was a convert to the religion for many years (longer than the author) and I attended a Jewish seminary to boot (a yeshiva). I identify with her experience with Orthodox Judaism. It is a beautiful religion with a lot of spirituality and wisdom. But for me something was missing. After years I realized that God, after all the memorizations of laws and prayers, was every distant (the religion has an almost Gnostic side to it where God can be reached after certain steps are met). I felt a call to find a closer bond with Him. My long search within Judaism led me to Christianity. Another issue I had with Orthodox Judaism, which I saw in GIRL MEETS GOD, was that I did not belong. Sure all the books say I do. In fact a convert is supposed to be respected equal. But the people sadly treated me as a curiosity. Though I wanted to be married no match maker would set me up because I was not born Jewish. Their excuses ranged from not having memorized the whole Mishnah (a book of oral laws and traditions), not wearing my fedora 24/7, that I spoke to my non-Jewish family, that I some times wore jeans, that I have watched movies and TV, etc.

So while reading Winner's book, I found myself saying, "Me too!" Though I do not agree with some of her ideas, I still think we are on the same page. I can identify with her feelings for being seduced by Christ in the littlest of things like dreams, art, comments those closest to me have made. All in all I think it is a good book. I do not think, like others, that she is using her former Orthodox Jewish status to sell the book. It is an honest statement of her travels through life. Yes she is young. So what! God speaks to us at all stages in our lives and uses our energy to His own ends. If I could give her one bit of advice, I would advise her to check out more of the Reformed Theology, like the works John Calvin, I think she will find some connections between Reformed theology and Orthodox Judaism.

Girl Meets God is difficult to categorize because it is several books in one. It is a personal memoir, a devotional book, a study of the sad tension between Judaism and Christianity, a commentary on Scripture, a reflection on sacrament and liturgy, a look at the often slow process of conversion, and a celebration of reading (the author being a confirmed bookaholic).

An unlikely book to pick up-you're likely to find it wrongly placed in the Teen section of your bookstore-yet hard to put down. Winner's first effort (a second, Mudhouse Sabbath, is about Jewish traditions) offers brilliant spiritual insight throughout. A sign of a good book is when you keep thinking about it after you put it down. If the adage that readers make good writers is true, it applies here. Winner is a gifted wordsmith and wise beyond her youth. The pace is happily fragmented, not always chronological, spiritual, and down-to-earth at the same time.

Winner is a free-thinker, so her writing departs from the typical style of devotional books. Her story reinforces the truism that believers are works-in-progress, and God's steady inward grace is on display as she shares her faults, struggles, and lessons learned on her journey. "My life is like a disciple's nap in Gethsemene." She lives with a distinctly Hebraic-tinged grace: "I hadn't given up the shape in which I saw the world, or the words I knew for God, and those shapes and words were mostly Jewish."

The daughter of a Jewish father and a Christian mother, and raised Jewish, Winner learned that she had to formally convert to Judaism, which she did...but gradually she is drawn to Jesus and another conversion. Winner wasn't entirely embraced by the Jewish community (yet I wonder if those who rejected her knew as much about Judaism), which perhaps was a factor that led her to Jesus, although she makes it clear that her faith came not by one influence or event but rather by many factors.

Another amazon.com reviewer calls Lauren Winner the perfect dinner guest. She is without question someone who would provide a substantive discussion of life, books, faith, and struggle. Trained at Columbia and Cambridge universities, and a contributing editor for Christianity Today, she is now pursuing her Doctorate. The title and cover may be mistaken for a teen devotional, but this is a book for serious Christian disciples and devout Jews who may want to consider Winner's love affair with both Orthodox Judaism and Christianity.

Lauren Winner strikes me as the kind of person who could be the ultimate dinner guest. She's young and energetic, interested and interesting, together and a mess, mature and girlish, saint and sinner. For such a young lady she is incredibly well read and knows all kinds of things about all kinds of topics. If her writing style is any indication she has an abundance of charm, and she is opinionated enough to be provocative and self-effacing enough to be humble.

This book is her tale of walking into Orthodox Judaism, out of it to Christianity, and her attempts to synthesize some elements of her Jewish background with her newfound faith in Christ.

The story is valuable to Christians simply for the insight it gives into Judaism. Lauren was a convert to Judaism, she wasn't born in an orthodox Jewish household. Thus, she became an orthodox Jew by conviction, and through much study. She didn't merely adopt the ways of the Jewish faith in an unthinking manner, she studied it in depth and adopted it throughout the process of a long intellectual and spiritual struggle.

A similar thing happened with her conversion to Christ. Through a period of study and a series of events she felt Christ calling her. As, little by little, she came to believe that Christ was real and that He had truly come in the flesh, she found herself irresistably drawn to Christ.

None of us can ever escape our own biases when reading something and I can't escape mine in reading this account. Lauren came into the branch of Christianity known as the Episcopal Church. As one who is from the Reformed tradition, I would wish that in her journey to Christianity she had continued all the way to Geneva, and not stopped in London. I recoil at her use of icons in worship. She seems to me to rely too heavily on the Book of Common Prayer, and not the Bible. So, I doubt that I will wholeheartedly recommend this as an evangelistic tract, simply because she doesn't "speak my language." Yet, I do recommend it to the discerning reader of a wonderfully honest, earthy story of the struggles involved in one person's journey to faith.

Also, one of the benefits of this book is that she is just so well read. She understands the nuances of the different evangelical subcultures, talks intelligently about historical events in the church and raises important theological topics. Although she doesn't always come down on my side of things she talks intelligentl about them all. If nothing else, this book is a testament to the value of reading in a person's life. She is very young and yet very well rounded, and this well-roundedness can only be explained by her voracious appetite for reading. One of my favorite anecdotes in the book is her story of how her mother used to have some kind of obligation she had to attend each week. Her mother would take Lauren, with her, give her $5.00 and send her to the pizza place next door and tell her to get something to eat. Trouble is, there was a bookstore right there to. So, Lauren says that she was faced with her weekly dilemma of whether or not to eat dinner or buy a book - I love it.

It's a good book and I can enthusiastically recommend it, with the aforementioned caveats.

How does a woman passionate about the Jewish faith suddenly find Jesus? "I have spent my whole life...seeking God," writes Lauren Winner, and here, a 20-something, self-confessed "boy crazy, pointy-headed academic" shares the quirky path of her spiritual journey from Judaism to Christianity in this compelling book. As she unfolds her spiritual pilgrimage, she acknowledges "A literature scholar would say there are too many 'ruptures' in the 'narrative.' But she might also say that ruptures are the most interesting part of any text, that in the ruptures we learn something new." Her story, with all its "ruptures," makes for absorbing reading.

As the child of a Reform Jewish father and a lapsed Southern Baptist mother, Winner grew up with both a Christmas tree and a menorah. Her parents raised her in the Jewish faith, and she details how she embraced Orthodox Judaism in college. "But, gradually my Judaism broke," she writes.

Although Winner is a scholar, with degrees from Columbia and Cambridge universities, she found the spark for her conversion to Christianity in a surprising book: After reading AT HOME IN MITFORD by Jan Karon, "I thought, 'I want what they have,' " she admits somewhat abashedly. She found herself "courted by a very determined carpenter from Nazareth," one who haunted her dreams.

This conversion, just several years after her former wholehearted conversion to Orthodox Judaism, caused some acquaintances to be skeptical that Christianity would stick: they wondered aloud if she would convert again to something else. And indeed Winner, like most honest Christians, finds that as much as she is at home now in her new faith, she is still plagued by doubt: "Sometimes, lately, I feel a sort of sinking staleness...this isn't working, I don't believe this Christian thing anymore, this is just some crazy fix I've been on...." But she also realizes about her Christianity that "How to fall in love is not, now, what I need to learn. What I need to learn, maybe what God wants me to learn, is the long grind after you've landed."

It is in the "long grind" that Winner finds she cannot divorce Judaism, hard as she tries: giving away and selling her Jewish library, eating forbidden foods, trading in her Hebrew prayer book for the Episcopal BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER. When you convert, Winner writes, you lose all sorts of things: your vocabulary, your prayers, and many special relationships. As Winner tries to adapt to the Christian liturgical calendar, she finds her life still flowing in the rhythms of the Jewish holidays. Even as she gives away the trappings of her Jewish life, she finds she has not given up the way she sees the world, or the Jewish words she knew for God.

With resolve, it seems, to master every aspect of her new faith, Winner grapples with all of its accoutrements: confession, giving up reading for Lent, finding a church, taking the Eucharist, trying to be chaste. She puzzles over the idea of "speaking in tongues"; struggles with prayer ("I have a hard time praying. It feels, usually, like a waste of time"). Most compelling are her clear-eyed observations of her own shortcomings as she grows in her Christianity and her willingness to be vulnerable with the reader. She refuses to sugarcoat her experiences; rather, she offers frank and perceptive commentary on how real faith --- Jewish or Christian --- looks, with all its bumps and bruises. As she plumbs the rituals and disciplines of both faiths, there is the unspoken invitation to Christians to examine the Jewish roots of their beliefs.

Her rebuilding of her Jewish library metaphorically shows her burgeoning realization that she can welcome her Jewishness as it shapes how she sees Christianity, how she reads the Bible, how she thinks about Jesus --- and that this is the way forward.

Winner's thoughtful book, full of the longing, doubt, humor and poignancy that can accompany a search for God, is a captivating read and builds bridges for dialogue for all readers, no matter what their faith.

--- Reviewed by Cindy Crosby

This book was excellent, despite it's slightly cheesy title. Winner is smart, witty, and incredibly honest about her spiritual journey. I learned so much about Judaism, and definitely thought about my own Christian faith. This book is refreshing and thought-provoking in its honesty and intellectualism.

Read this book over a long weekend, or on a night before you'll be allowed to sleep in: I make that suggestion becuase I couldn't put Girl Meets God down. I began it at around 8 in the evening, and was still reading at 3 am!! Lauren Winner is on a spiritual search. Here we follow her to Memphis, New York, and England, in and out of synogogues and churhces, and finally to an Anglican chapel in Cambridge, England where she finds her spiritual home. She's not preachy, and doesn't insist that her way is the only way -- instead, she just invites us to come along on her journey. Many books I've read about Christianity make spiritual searching seem out of my reach -- this book resonated with me becuase I understood that the author was just a regular young woman, like you or me. If you liked Kathleen Norris's The Cloister Walk, you'll definitely enjoy Girl Meets God. Just don't read it if you have to get up early!

I'm not going to wax poetic forever on how engaging a read "Girl meets God" is and I'm not going to write out my life story or testimony. What I would like to say, is that if you are a Christian frustrated with the limitations and restraints and "rules" that MAN puts on us, then Winner's book is a refreshing admittance of not being able to live up to them. It is an honest account of testing and discovering her faith, of never being content with the previous day's knowledge, and of showing us that faith CAN be a factor of intelligence and study -- as in, it's okay to develop your faith through books in ADDITION to the Bible.

While I feel there is much she left out about her life and feelings, I reveled in the fact that she approaches Christianity so intellectually and honestly. She admits jealousy, guilt, wavering emotions, "sin", etc. and does so without placing these expectations on the reader. Her intelligence and the fact that she is so well-read presents Christianity in a non-gushy light (yes, that's a technical term) -- which this reader, from a charismatic Pentacostal background based on emotions and warm-fuzzy feelings -- greatly appreciates.

This book was a Christmas gift from my boyfriend, who grew up Jewish, to me (from a Christian background). Since we have recently joined a congregation where we both can worship, this book really struck a chord with me.

I enjoyed her writing style, and appreciated her candor. The Anglican church was, at first, an intriguing choice for Ms. Winner (in my opinion), but the Book of Common Prayer seemed to be a source of comfort and a point of reference as she eased into Christianity. I can appreciate the need to have something tangible that's part of her communal experience of worship.

This book should be a good conversation starter for my boyfriend and me, once he finishes reading it. I would recommend it to friends, couples, or other family members of differing faiths.

Girl Meets God tells the story of one woman's journey into the church. Having grown up Jewish, Lauren converts to Christianity after college. She then embarks on a process both to understand the ongoing place of Judaism in her life, but also, simply, to understand what it means to be a Christian and to find her palce in the church. She is full of wonder about Christianity, enthusiastic and enraptured. But she also has doubts and questions, and sometimes she slips up. Her honest, personal voice makes this book so much more than an ordinary memoir or an ordinary book about religion. I really felt like I got to know Lauren, that when I opened this book a friend was sitting down to have coffee in my kitchen and we were talking about intimate things. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

A post-modern spiritual pilgrim, Lauren chronicles her journey to Orthodox Judaism and her later conversion to Christianity. Her voice is at once raw and winsome, while her mind excavates layers of theology, wrangles with singleness, celebrates community with books and friends, and with all earnestness, strives to love God. A testimony sans-cliches.