Author: Abigail Pogrebin

“According to the writer Leon Wieseltier, the greatest scandal among American Jews is illiteracy. We simply don’t know enough — not nearly enough — about who we are and what Jews believe.

During lunch at a Washington, D.C., steakhouse more than a decade ago, Wieseltier encouraged my own Torah study and efforts to deepen my faith by admonishing, ‘Who are we to let this 4,000-year-old tradition slip through our fingers?’ The journalist Abigail Pogrebin, who interviewed Wieseltier for her book about Jewish identity, ‘Stars of David,’ takes his cri de coeur seriously. In ‘My Jewish Year,’ she becomes curious about how Jews search for meaning — ‘something tugged at me, telling me there was more to feel than I’d felt, more to understand than I knew’ — and decides to celebrate all the Jewish holidays of the calendar year, even the ones she’s never heard of.”

Read David Gregory’s full review over on NYTimes.com.