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
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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