Lord Will Gather Me In: My Journey to Jewish Orthodoxy - Hardcover

Klinghoffer, David

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0684823411 ISBN 13: 9780684823416

Publisher: Free Press, 1998

Synopsis

Why would a comfortably affluent, well-educated, secular Jew seek out the rigorous discipline of traditional Jewish observance? This is the intriguing question behind not just David Klinghoffer's personal story, but the growing movement of Jewish ba'alei teshuvah. In recent decades, tens of thousands of young Jews have returned to Orthodox Judaism, responding in a startling way to the spiritual hunger felt by millions of Americans. They have found that Orthodoxy means not withdrawing from the world, but coming to feel God's presence in every facet of life. Klinghoffer, one of these newly traditional Jews, also happens to be a highly articulate, sensitive, and sympathetic writer who states his beliefs so reasonably that readers will be hard-pressed to explain why everyone isn't Orthodox. Writing with style and wit, Klinghoffer describes his secular Jewish parents; his 1970s Southern California upbringing, complete with professional disco dancers at his bar mitzvah; and his first serious girlfriend, a committed Catholic. Behind all these experiences are nagging questions: Why do some Jews persist in observing Torah commandments that to the uninitiated seem impossibly esoteric? After three millennia, why is the Jewish tradition still so puzzling and disturbing, to Jews no less than to non-Jews? Slowly, at first clumsily, young David explores traditional Judaism. Wanting to do the right thing, he tries to ceremonially re-circumcise himself in a bathtub at home -- at the age of twelve. By adulthood he feels that God is guiding him in some particular direction. An adoptee, he often thinks of the line from Psalm 27, "Should my father and mother abandon me, the Lord will gather me in." Yet even after two more conversions, he doesn't understand the heart of Judaism until after he has set out to find his Swedish birth mother, a non-Jew, who reveals to him a family secret that sends David on a research mission to Stockholm. There, among 200-year-old birth and death records from a Swedish church, he discovers what it means to be a Jew.

About this title

About the Author

David Klinghoffer is a senior editor at National Review, where he writes about culture and edits the "Books, Arts, & Manners" section. His reviews and essays have also appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and Commentary. A thirty-three-year-old California native and graduate of Brown University, he lives in New York City.

Review

Ari L. Goldman Author of The Search For God at Harvard The spiritual traveler's road is never a straight one, but David Klinghoffer's journey has so many unexpected twists and turns -- through adoption and romance and more circumcisions than anyone should have to endure -- that he kept me fascinated and reading to the last splendid page. -- Review

Edition details

• Publisher: Free Press
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0684823411
• ISBN 13: 9780684823416
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 272