In a society where 52% of
American Jews are marrying spouses not born to Judaism and which allows for total
assimilation of Jews, this book fills an important need for non-Jews to understand
Jewish family members and friends, and provides a welcoming place for Jewish people
to reclaim their own heritage. Welcome to the Family!
: Opening Doors to the Jewish Experience is a user-friendly guidebook
designed to increase the comfort level of those unfamiliar with the Jewish experience.
It provides the reader with easy to understand and informative explanations about
Jews, Judaism and Jewish events.
This practical handbook
is written especially for those seeking simple explanations about Jews, Jewish
events, and Judaism, and will increase both the reader's knowledge and comfort
level in interacting with Jewish people. It is informative, easy to read and understand.
Welcome to the Family! addresses the issues
of intermarried families and speaks to their concerns in a warm, welcoming manner,
interspersing personal family stories with basic information about the Jewish
experience. It is written from first hand experience by an educator who is a mother
and mother-in-law of intermarried children.
Most important, there are
no other books like this on the market! One can read this book and others like
it to get the basic information about being Jewish and about Judaism, but the
nuance, the so-called rules, the humor, the collective memories, the sense of
belonging, the reason why certain responses are the norm to specific circumstances-all
of these combine to make up the Jewish psyche. This aspect of the Jewish experience
is often hard to understand and even harder to acquire. Other books simply don't
address this. Welcome to the Family!
Lois Sussman Shenker,