An intriguing tale of one woman’s search for identity and community.
A memoir about an unusual spiritual journey.
In her first book, freelance writer Himsel chronicles her slow transition from the cultlike religion of her youth to her conversion to Judaism. Raised in rural Indiana, the author followed her parents into the Worldwide Church of God, a quasi-Christian religion founded by radio evangelist Herbert Armstrong. The religion, steeped in end-times teachings, required members to adhere to Old Testament laws and holy days while eschewing many of the traditions of mainstream Christianity. Himsel was raised to assume the imminent end of the world and to see her salvation as based on how thoroughly she followed church teachings. Nevertheless, she managed to move onward, entering Indiana University. In 1981, while in college, she left to study in Israel to pursue her intense interest in the area’s biblical history. At the time, she knew almost nothing about modern-day Israel or modern Judaism. Over time, however, her connection to Judaism grew—through Israel and through American Jewish friends—while her faith in her parents’ church waned. Eventually, while living in New York, a Jewish boyfriend and a pregnancy forced the issue of conversion, leading to yet another journey. Himsel admirably narrates her life story in page-turning prose that is both entertaining and moving. Her tale of conversion is unique given that she started in what can only be seen tangentially as a Christian denomination. The since-discredited Worldwide Church of God both stunted the author’s spiritual growth and led her to the foundations of Judaism. To many readers, it will seem that Judaism was a natural next step for Himsel. One unresolved issue is the author’s oft-expressed yearning for “the Spirit,” for a moment of certainty and full belonging. Unfortunately, she never seems to find this moment, nor even a full feeling of belonging, whether as a Christian or a Jew.
An intriguing tale of one woman’s search for identity and community.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-941493-24-3
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Fig Tree Books
Review Posted Online: June 17, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2018
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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