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Books > Humanities > Religion & beliefs > Non-Christian religions > Judaism > General
From the acclaimed author of Foreskin's Lament, a memoir of the author's attempt to escape the biblical story he'd been raised on and his struggle to construct a new story for himself and his family.
Shalom Auslander was raised like a veal in a dysfunctional family in the Orthodox community of Monsey, New York: the son of an alcoholic father; a guilt-wielding mother; and a violent, overbearing God. Now, as he reaches middle age, Auslander begins to suspect that what plagues him is something worse, something he can't so easily escape: a story. The story. One indelibly implanted in him at an early age, a story that told him he is fallen, broken, shameful, disgusting, a story we have all been told for thousands of years, and continue to be told by the religious and secular alike, a story called "Feh."
Yiddish for "Yuck."
FEH follows Auslander's midlife journey to rewrite that story, a journey that involves Phillip Seymour Hoffman, a Pulitzer-winning poet, Job, Arthur Schopenhauer, GHB, Wolf Blitzer, Yuval Noah Harari, and a pastor named Steve in a now-defunct church in Los Angeles.
Can he move from feh to merely meh? Can he even dream of moving beyond that? Auslander's recounting of his attempt to exorcize the story he was raised with-before he implants it onto his children and/or possibly poisons the relationship of the one woman who loves him-isn't sacred. It is more-than-occasionally profane. And like all his work, it is also relentlessly funny, subversively heartfelt, and fearlessly provocative.
This study presents the first comprehensive reconstruction of the
'New Jerusalem' Scroll from the Dead Sea, through integration of
all the known fragments into a single entity. Secret ceremonies in
the temple are discussed; an architectural reconstruction of the
elements described in the scroll is presented, accompanied by
computerized plans; a consideration of the tradition of planning
the ideal city leads to an examination of the use of metrology,
mathematics; and a number mysticism in the plan of the 'New
Jerusalem'. A comparison is also made with the traditions of
building orthogonal cities in Egypt, Greece, Rome and the Holy
Land, as manifested in archaeological findings.>
Yehudis Fletcher was six years old when she decided to find out if
there was actually a G-d.
One Sabbath evening, she dared to defy a fundamental rule. She didn’t
wash her hands before breaking bread. At the table, Yehudis braced
herself for a terrible, biblical punishment: being swallowed by the
ground or consumed by fire. But nothing happened.
It was at this moment that she discovered a spark within that would
grow to make her invincible.
As the daughter of a rabbi raised in an Orthodox Jewish community,
Yehudis struggled to conform to the strict expectations placed upon her
and her siblings. Outspoken, curious and desperate to know more about
G-d, she felt fenced in by arbitrary rules and questions left
unanswered.
As she grew older, these restrictions intensified and her questions for
G-d hung heavier than ever. Repeatedly let down by those who were
supposed to protect her and pushed on to a path that seemed to take her
further away from who she really was, she began to yearn for a life
where she could embrace all facets of herself.
When Yehudis’s sexuality came to blows with the expectations of her
family and her community, the pressure to inhabit a binary position
reached fever pitch. Confronted with either losing the faith she loved
or losing herself, Yehudis made the most daring decision of all: she
decided to stay.
Wry and exhilarating, Chutzpah is a fearless exploration of what is
possible when one person simply refuses to choose between abandoning
their roots and abandoning themselves.
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