Have Your Say

I had ordered You or Someone Like You it because I’d read a review somewhere and imagined that a book about Hollywood insiders would make a good summer read.
I’m the daughter of a non-practicing Jewish father, and a formerly Southern Baptist mother who sent me to Catholic school (for the scholastic advantages) and to the Episcopal church. My husband (a lapsed Presbyterian) and I were exploring Jerusalem in 1997, entered an open door in an ancient building and encountered the first friendly face I’d found in the city: a man in a kippa, who greeted us warmly and asked if we were from the U.S. We said yes, and he then inquired, “Are you Jewish?” My husband said, no, and simultaneously I answered, “Yes, my father was a Jew.”
“And your mother?” No.
He looked at me with a expression I saw on the faces of Orthodox men when they moved to the other side of narrow streets, perhaps to avoid touching me lest I was menstruating. Without words, he quickly moved us to and out of the door. We stood in the bright sun asking each other, “What was that about?”
Something has been bothering me about Judaism ever since that time in Jerusalem. In this book Burr articulated this “something.”
I’m grateful for it.

Gretchen Newmark
Portland, OR