Judaism for nonbelievers

“Do you ever mind not practicing a religion?” I asked my fourteen-year-old granddaughter. Her parents are secular Jews, neither of whom had any Jewish education. She thought about it. “No, not really. But sometimes I wish I knew more about Jewish history.”

It was a challenge I couldn’t ignore. I can seldom resist the temptation to educate, or, as my children would perhaps put it, to push knowledge at my descendants whether they want it or not. Where would I find the right books for her? As the daughter of a Conservative rabbi, I can’t remember a time when I didn’t know a fair amount about Jewish history. But all the books I read were celebratory -- how great, virtuous, courageous and long-suffering we were, how cruel and and vicious the rest of mankind. Or teleological: all of history leading to the sublime moment of Israel’s foundation. These were not the sort of books I wanted.

When my oldest son was four I wanted him to know the Bible stories just as I wanted him to know the Greek and Norse myths. But those myths were the easy part. There was no D’Aulaire for Bible stories. I scanned the Blackwell’s catalogs (in those days, books were much cheaper in England, and we ordered cartons of them for the holidays) and chose a few paperbacks. But these stories were teleological in a different way -- all paths leading to Christ. I checked out some Jewish versions, and of  course they were equally biased.

I should say here that my own rock-solid knowledge of Biblical narrative came straight from Bible comics, which were given out free when my mother bought my school clothes at Gertz Department Store on Jamaica Avenue. But Gertz is gone, and so, it appears, are Bible comics. (I have also talked intelligently at many an academic dinner party about books I knew only through Classics Illustrated, another sad loss to humanity).

In the end, I decided to tell my son the Bible tales as bedtime stories. He was pretty bored  until we reached the Joseph story, and then we both got excited. It was a real lesson to me about narrative structure, what works and what doesn’t. Thomas Mann, whose four-volume Joseph and his Brothers has delighted me through at least three readings, must have made the same discovery.

For my granddaughter I wanted books that would compare the Biblical narratives with the evidence of archaeology, which often tells a different story. For example, the current consensus is that there probably was no exodus from Egypt, at least not on any large scale, and no conquest of the Judaean cities (which will come as a relief to Jewish humanitarians uncomfortable with the commandment to let no living thing survive -- not even the puppies and kittens). The books had to be pretty short, what with homework, ballet, texting, and abridged 21st century attention spans. And of course they had to be written well enough so she wouldn’t just drop them behind her bed.

In the end, I picked three books from amazon.com, none of which I had read. One was An Illustrated History of the Jewish People, by Lawrence Joffe. Well, pictures help, and who knows, it might even entice her eleven-year-old sister. The second was A Short History of the Jewish People, by Raymond P. Scheindlin. Short is good, and it got satisfied reviews. The last was Judaism: a Very Short Introduction, by Norman Solomon. Length and reviews, once again. (And the second two are both Oxford University Press, so they can’t be total trash, can they?)

I asked my daughter-in-law if our girl had read The Diary of Anne Frank. Turns out she had, but wasn’t completely enraptured. When I was fourteen, I would have sworn that book would appeal to any girl of our age (and send her out to buy notebooks and try her own miserable skills). But perhaps it has finally become dated?

Finally, I recommended a historical novel to both my granddaughter and her parents: As a Driven Leaf, by Milton Steinberg. Written in 1939, it imagines the possible story of a real second-century rabbi, Elisha ben Abuyah, who became an apostate and whose sayings (still preserved in the Talmud) are attributed to “Another,” since his name could not be mentioned. Steinberg (a rabbi) pictured him as a child who was adopted by an Hellenized uncle after he was orphaned, and brought up with a Greek education. Later, he returned to Judaism, but was seduced away again by Greek culture and a Greek woman. I don’t know if they’ll like it. My son points out that his children are unhappy with any movie or book that doesn’t have an ironic cast. This certainly doesn’t. But although it is perhaps 60 years since I read it, I still know the last paragraph by heart, and it still brings tears to my eyes.

I’d love some book recommendations! Not only for the teenager, but also for my younger grandchildren. Two of them (eight and ten years old) are not Jewish. What books can I find for them?