Q: The Jew in the Lotus

I can't seem to help myself; I love this book. It's called The Jew in the Lotus, and it's by Rodger Kamenetz, who is just a really good writer. He is frank, funny, cuts right to the chase (but elegantly), and unlike many modern American writers, he has no fear of metaphors. The book is about a delegation of Jews representing a cross-section of American-Israeli Jewish culture, who went to visit the Dalai Lama in 1990, controversial stuff to be sure. I don't endorse this kind of dialogue, but it happened, and Kamenetz's account is fascinating. I normally shy away from literature produced by liberal Jewish writers, as I have found much of it to be intellectually dishonest and unjustifiably anti-religious. I haven't finished the book yet, but so far, this is proving to be a notable and very readable exception.

Enough gushing. If you've read the book, tell me what you think.

Rodger Kamenetz gave me permission to print an excerpt, so I guess I should put all the legal stuff here. The Jew in the Lotus is copyright © 1994 by Rodger Kamenetz and was published by Harper Collins. All rights reserved. You can pick it up at Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

Here's the author contrasting a positive prayer experience to the tradition in which he was raised:



...The davening was delightful: vigorous, lusty, witty and raucous, quiet and joyful.
This was all new to me. On any free association test, I'm sure after prayer, I would have checked boring. As a boy I'd served time in Orthodox shuls, where the Hebrew was babbled at supersonic rates, and I spent most of my time trying to figure out what page we were on and when it was okay to sit down. Of course, this was all my own ignorance. I'd been raised primarily as a liberal Reform Jew and had learned only a handful of prayers. My family belonged to a giant cruise ship of a synagogue, with comfortable wooden pews and lofty architecture. Huge concrete Jewish stars framed the windows and a lovely north light filtered through them down to the cool gray carpet. I used to watch the dust motes suspended in the air instead of following the prayers. The cantor and choir sang beautifully while the congregation sat in silence, like an audience at a concert. This is where Reform Judaism had gotten off track in the fifties. It felt like our employees were praying for us.