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Description edit
The child of a Jewish father and a lapsed Southern Baptist mother, Lauren F. Winner chose to become an Orthodox Jew. But even as she was observing Sabbath rituals and studying Jewish law, Lauren was increasingly drawn to Christianity. Courageously leaving what she loved, she eventually... read more
Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit
Characters/People edit
- Lauren F. Winner: The author of this memoir, history graduate student and the child of a Jewish father and lapsed Southern Baptist mother.
- Steven: Former boyfriend and fellow history graduate student
- Hannah: Lauren's girlfriend
- Pastor Mike: Presbyterian minister and spiritual adviser the author has known since her undergraduate work at Columbia University.
- Rabbi M.: Spiritual director while in Columbia University and during Lauren's conversion to Orthodox Judaism.
- Dov: Lauren's boyfriend during college
- Lil: Lauren's 10th grade physics teacher and "the one devout Christian" she knew while in college.
- Jo: Priest associated with Clare College chapel, Cambridge where Lauren was baptized in the Christian community
- Randi: Lauren's oldest friend. She would stay with the 15 year old Lauren when mother would leave Richmond for work. Randi was finishing a Ph.D. in philosophical theology when they first met. Randi considered Lauren her "dialogue partner."
- Milead: Episcopal priest and Lauren's current pastor
- Zev and Joan Farmer: The family that "adopted" Lauren when she was in college.
- Aaron and Rena Farmer: Zev and Joan Farmers' son and daughter. Lauren was "half-smitten" with Aaron throughout college; however, marriage was impossible because the Farmers were cohanim, which meant that they were descended from a long line of priests therefore Aaron could not marry converts.
- Fr. Peter: Lauren's confessor who lives in upstate NY
Quotes edit
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“Not only had God given me work to do. He had given me little poetic snatches of reassurance, too.”
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“I am a Christian because being a Christian gives me a picture of God to talk to during all these moments where, without the picture, I would forget that God exists.”
Lauren -
“God had to be embodied, or else people with bodies would never in a trillion years understand about love.”
Jane Vonnegut Yarmolinsky
- Popular Highlights from Kindle Customers
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God is a novelist. He uses all sorts of literary devices: alliteration, assonance, rhyme, synecdoche, onomatopoeia. But of all these, His favorite is foreshadowing.
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My life is like a disciple’s nap in Gethsemane: I have promised, over and over, to be vigilant for the things of God, to be awake to Him, but I seem to spend much of my life sleeping.
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God had to be embodied, or else people with bodies would never in a trillion years understand about love.”
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“Of his bounty, the Lord often grants not what we seek, so as to bestow something preferable.”
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The seminarians, Jennifer Egan wrote, “talk about their prayer lives the way most people talk about their love lives.”
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To say, “I believe in Jesus Christ” is not to subscribe to an uncertain proposition. It is a confession of commitment, of love.
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But God so wants to be in relationship with us that He makes himself small, smaller than He really is, smaller and more humble than his infinite, perfect self, so that we might be able to get to Him, a little bit.
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“As their strength diminishes, increase their faith and their assurance of your love.”
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Sometimes, as in a great novel, you cannot see until you get to the end that God was leaving clues for you all along. Sometimes you wonder, How did I miss it? Surely any idiot should have been able to see from the second chapter that it was Miss Scarlet in the conservatory with the rope.
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There are a few people out there with whom you fit just so, and, amazingly, you keep fitting just so even after you have growth spurts or lose weight or stop wearing high heels. You keep fitting after you have children or change religions or stop dyeing your hair or quit your job at Goldman Sachs and take up farming. Somehow, God is gracious enough to give us a few of those people, people you can stretch into, people who don’t go away, and whom you wouldn’t want to go away, even if they offered to.
Highlighted by 3 Kindle customers
Setting & Locations edit
- Oxford, Mississippi: Home of Ole Miss University where Lauren did research for her Master's thesis and attended a Southern history conference
- Memphis: Location of Brit Hadasha, home of Memphis' Messianic Jews (Christian Jews)
- New York City: Lauren attends Columbia University and where she converts to Orthodox Judaism
- Congregation Beth Israel: The synagogue Lauren attended as an adolescent after the divorce of her parents and her mother moved to Charlottesville, Va.
- University of Cambridge, UK: Lauren converts to Christianity
First Sentence edit
Back when Mississippi was dry, Ole Miss students and any other Oxford residents who wanted a drink would drive to Memphis, just across the state line, stock up on beer and whiskey, and haul it back in the trunks of their cars.
Table of Contents edit
I. Sukkot
1. Oxford, Mississippi
II. Advent
1. Morning Prayer: John 8
2. All Angels'
3. Conversion Stories
4. Shopping for a Creche with Hannah
III. Christmas
1. My Icons and Me
IV. Epiphany
1. Baptism
2. Tu B'Shevat Muffins
3. Conversion Stories
4. Taxonomy
5. Family Values
6. Lowell House
7. A Winter Wedding
V. Lent
1. Ash Wednesday Evangelism
2. Reading Fast
3. Iola
4. Prayer Life
5. Randi Waits Anxiously for a Phone Call
6. Grinning Bananas, Teal Crescent Moons, and Other Body Art
VI. Holy Week
1. Palm Sunday
2. Holocaust Fantasies
3. Seder Stories
4. The Viaticum
5. Opal's Easter
VII. Eastertide
1. Contraband Party
2. Bede
3. Ascension Day
4. Confession
5. Family Reunions
6. Two Funerals, and a Wedding
7. All the Questions You Might Want to Ask about Angels
VIII. Pentecost
1. Shavuot
2. The Bible I Use
3. Reading Ruth
4. Speaking in Tongues
5. Paring Knife
6. Albemarle Pilgrimage
7. Credo
8. Mary Johnson's Sampler
9. Religious Revivals
10. Sanctification School
11. On Rebuilding a Jewish Library
IX. Advent
1. Shabbat Morning
Glossary edit
- Halacha: (n) The body of Jewish law supplementing the scriptural law and forming esp. the legal part of the Talmud.
- chagrin: (vt): To vex or unsettle by disappointing or humiliating.
- Sukkot: Feast of Tabernacles to remind Jewish families of the sukkots (huts) they inhabited while camped in the wilderness for forty years.
- Rosh Hashanah: Jewish New Year
- Yom Kippur: Day of Atonement, when God is making his final judgments about who will live and who will die, who He will forgive and who He will punish.
- Simchat Torah: The Jewish holiday immediately following Sukkot, the day Jews set aside to celebrate reading.
- Purim: The Jewish holiday that celebrates Esther and Mordecai's saving the Jews of Persia from death.
Authors & Contributors edit
- Lauren F. Winner (Author)
First Edition edit
Original Language: English
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Country: Add the country of publication.
Publication Date: 2002
ISBN: 1565123093
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Country: Add the country of publication.
Publication Date: 2002
ISBN: 1565123093
Page Count: 288
Classification edit
- Library of Congress: Add the Library of Congress Classification.
- Dewey: 248.246092
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