RETURNING

Revealing roots.

Journalist and author Lemann (The Promised Land, 1991) investigates a past that he barely knew growing up in a secular Jewish family in New Orleans, and finds his way into a new, more intense connection with Judaism. His search takes him back four generations, to his great-great-grandfather, Jacob Lemann, who emigrated from Germany alone in his 20s, married a Christian woman, and set up a series of successful businesses that would be passed down to his children and grandchildren. Lemann’s grandfather and father attended Harvard and became lawyers. “We were insiders who were also outsiders,” Lemann writes. “We led comfortable lives that had very strict limitations.” He situates the members of his family within the wider group of German Jews, “dignified, prosperous, and well-established Jewish people who had come here from Germany rather than Russia,” often suspicious of later waves of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. As he delves deeper into his family’s history, Lemann documents their long-held desire for assimilation and strong resistance to Zionism. He also begins to question what Judaism means to him: “There is no way completely to normalize Jewishness, to the point where it comfortably conforms with the standards of the outside world, without its losing most of its richness, maybe even most of its real meaning.” As he forms a relationship with the woman who would become his second wife, journalist Judith Shulevitz, who is “a Jew first and everything else second,” he moves toward a form of Judaism that involves three-hour weekly services, celebration of the Sabbath, and Jewish education for their children. Both an argument for allowing knowledge of the past to inform present decisions, and an exploration of moving away from family and local community into a broader community, the book presents provisional answers to questions about the complications of Jewish identity.

A thoughtful and deeply personal response to history and religion.