FaithHacker Recommends: Adding Spirituality to Your Bedside Table

Since Laurel and I are hanging out together at the AWP conference today, I thought it would be appropriate to give some fiction recommendations for spiritual reading. Or as my high school English teacher liked to say, “Things to make you go hmmmmm…”

The Wholeness of a Broken Heart by Katie Singer – A book about four generations of Jewish women, Judaism ends up being the background that all the women learn to deal with. I admit I first picked it up because of the awesome title, and it did not disappoint.
The Gilded Chamber: Who doesn't like a novel set in a harem?
The Chosen by Chaim Potok – If for some reason you haven’t read this classic, please go pick it up now. Besides all kinds of insight into Hassidism and the trials and joys of the Orthodox community it’s fantastically well written. The first time I read it I was twelve and I immediately thought, “I’m an apikoros!” And I was all proud and shit. The movie is pretty good, too.

The Genizah at the House of Shepher by Tamar Yellin – I decided to like this book even before I read it because it was written by someone named Tamar, but I wasn’t disappointed. It’s the story of family that’s trying to hold its own religious history while competing with religious zealots, it does the whole back and forth in time thing without being annoying. A good thing to read when you’re trying to figure out how important it is to be Jewish when you don’t feel like being religious.

The Red Tent by Anita Diamant and The Gilded Chamber by Rebecca Kohn – You’ve probably already read the Red Tent, which is a fictionalized account of the story of Dina. The Gilded Chamber is the same kind of thing with the story of Esther. Both are fun and fascinating and make you think about Biblical women in all kinds of news ways. (And hey guys, one of my best guy friends read the Red Tent last year and told me he was expecting to hate it but he LOVED it. He swore me to secrecy, though, because he’s a pussy. But you’re not a pussy, are you? I thought not. Now get reading.)

The Dyke and the Dybbuk by Ellen Galford – I read this book when I was about fifteen, and I would read about ten pages and then put the book down, laugh and say, “Wow!” I was kind of a dork when I was fifteen. Anyway, the Kirkus review calls it “A fun, feisty, feminist romp through Jewish folklore as an ancient spirit returns to haunt a modern-day London lesbian.” A fun thing to read on those days you need to think about spirituality outside of religiosity.

The First Desire by Nancy Reisman – Full Disclosure: Nancy’s my fiction professor these days. She’s also a fantastic writer and doesn’t, to my knowledge, read this blog, so I’m not kissing up. This is the story of a Jewish family in Buffalo, New York in first half of the 20th century. Without being obvious about it, it examines the way Jews were treated by others, and the way Jews treated outsiders. A good examination of “the community.”

That should be enough to get you to the library. Anyone else have recommendations?