As a Jew: Reclaiming Our Story from Those Who Blame, Shame, and Try to Erase Us

Former White House speechwriter Hurwitz (Here All Along) makes a full-throated case for Judaism’s relevance in an increasingly secular and often openly antisemitic world. Raised on a “cultural Judaism” from which she gleaned mostly “a collection of social justice slogans and self-­help clichés,” the author had a tenuous connection to her faith until she signed up for an introduction to Judaism class in her 30s. Shedding “false” notions of the faith, Hurwitz came to understand the Torah as less a prescriptive rule book than an account of “who the Jews are” with instructions for building a more moral society. She also came to see Israel not as an inherent bully but an ancestral homeland recovered after thousands of years of “living and dying by others’ whims” (though makes clear that she opposes a number of Israel’s actions, including today’s war in Gaza), and antisemitism as less a bygone problem than a pressing if sometimes subtly disguised threat. Suggesting that growing up in a Christian society had made her “recoil from my own tradition,” Hurwitz makes especially trenchant points about the existential challenges posed by a modern America that ostensibly offers Jews more freedom than ever but asks them to prioritize Judeo-Christian values and suppress more cumbersome elements of their culture to fit in. The result is an important and energetic analysis of what it means to be Jewish in America today. (Sept.)