When reading this book, I was struck by the feeling that the author desperately wished to make Judaism "cool", and somehow more socially acceptable to her friends. I did NOT get the feeling that she was truly looking for any kind of understanding of her heritage.Additionally, I saw her speak, and the one point that she made (all other questions were deferred to her "posse" of friends, most to a Reconstructionist Rabbi she found somewhere) was that she wished that people would "wear the Star of David on big leather thongs around their necks, like Madonna wears a cross."Very enlightening.Your 15 minutes shall soon be up. Next please.

This is a self-absorbed, self important, pretentious and quite irrelevant collection of unrelated, uninteresting and unenlightened references to things allegedly Jewish. The cover blurb about generation J Jews who name their children Tiffany and eat kasha varnishkes is, far and away, the most entertaining part of the book - and you can read that for free. Beyond that, the book has no core, no serious thought, no reflections, observations or assessments worth reading. I easily believe that the author does something or other on the web...web blathering is about as deep, as thoughtful and as significant as this book gets. Browse it and reject it. It's worth several minutes of your time, at best. Pass on to something better and more profound - like, for example, any of the "Rabbi" mysteries popular years ago. This is substantially less "jewish" than Levy's rye bread - and substantially less nutritious as well.

Ms. Schiffman's book is not at all what I thought it would be. From the jacket, it appeared to answer all of our questions about why our generation grew up in non-religious homes but we seem to be lingering back to our parents/grandparents Judaism. Problem... she doesn't discuss this. She talks about her own life and why she hates/loves Judaism. She's angry that she couldn't find a rabbi to marry her, but she married a gentile. Sorry Lisa, but I have better things to read than your life story!

While I admire the author for undertaking a journey to find her spiritual roots, and publishing an account of that journey, I find her methods utterly laughable. She goes to everyone but Jews to validate her Judaism. When a person tries to learn about something and their place in it, its best to go to the source of that thing. She generally ignores the idea of talking to and interacting with other Jews, is very uncomfortable with her own heritage, and regards any steps which she makes as little prizes to be shown off and complimented on. It's also a very misleading cover- the book does not talk about our generation and our attempts to examine our Judaism, only hers. The book is readable, but just barely.

The cover of this book suggests that the author was going to write an in-depth book about people living in this post- holocaust generation of Jews. However, she talks only about her own experiences without covering anyone else who happens to be included in "Gen J." She obviously assumes she is the only person included in "generation J" and forgets, or rather doesn't care about other people's opinions.

This does NOT seem to be the actual RCA-Bluebird reissue that is pictured! SEE INSTEAD:Stormy WeatherThis deserves zero stars, but Amazon doesn't allow that!