Jujitsu Rabbi and the Godless Blonde: A True Story

Pittsburgh native Dana grew up dreaming of moving to New York City and living à la Carrie Bradshaw in Sex and the City. Not long after graduating from Yale, she moved to Manhattan to work at the New York Observer and immediately began making decisions based on what Carrie would do, like taking a cab she couldn’t afford (“the girl I wanted to be didn’t walk with her luggage”). She acquired the requisite designer clothes, lawyer boyfriend, and pad in the West Village—but when the boyfriend cheated on and cruelly dumped her, she moved to Crown Heights, Brooklyn, to gain distance from her pain and doubt. She became roommates with Cosmo, a 30-year-old Lubavitch rabbi who was questioning his faith while learning jujitsu, which makes for plenty of entertaining odd-couple conversations and adventures as their friendship grows. Dana may have fallen prey to a cliché, but writes well: she turns a nine-month stint in Brooklyn into a thoughtful, archly funny meditation on what it means to want a certain kind of life, achieve it, and then feel patently uncomfortable in it, noting, “I have lived my entire life according to established story lines, even when they aren’t true.” Explorations of her own Judaism are nicely placed against the backdrop of the Lubavitcher community. Agents: Jason Anthony, Rachel Vogel, Sylvie Rabineau. (Jan.)