Jujitsu Rabbi and the Godless Blonde
  • Published: 7 January 2014
  • ISBN: 9780425264935
  • Imprint: Berkley
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 304
  • RRP: $49.99

Jujitsu Rabbi and the Godless Blonde

A True Story

Formats & editions
EBook
24 Jan 2013
Paperback
7 Jan 2014
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Shalom Auslander meets The Odd Couple meets Joan Didion.

“For a generation of women who grew up watching Sex and the City, Manhattan is the Promised Land—or as Rebecca Dana puts it in her hilarious, self-deprecating new memoir, it’s ‘my Jerusalem—the shining city off in the distance, the only place to go’…[An] insightful tale of two fish out of water.”—O Magazine

Rebecca Dana worshipped at the altar of Truman Capote and Nora Ephron, dreaming of moving to New York. After college, life in the city turned out just as she’d planned: glamorous parties; beautiful people; the perfect job, apartment and man. But when it all comes crashing down, she is catapulted into another world.

She moves into Brooklyn’s Lubavitch community, and lives with Cosmo, a young Russian rabbi and jujitsu enthusiast. While Cosmo faces his disenchantment with Orthodoxy, Rebecca finds that her religion—the books and films that made New York seem like salvation—has also failed her. Shuttling between the worlds of religious extremism and secular excess, faith and fashion, Rebecca goes on a search for meaning.

A mix of Shalom Auslander and The Odd Couple, Jujitsu Rabbi and the Godless Blonde is a thought-provoking tale for the twenty-first century.

Includes a Readers Guide
  • Published: 7 January 2014
  • ISBN: 9780425264935
  • Imprint: Berkley
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 304
  • RRP: $49.99
Categories:

Praise for Jujitsu Rabbi and the Godless Blonde

"Fascinating and engrossing, reading Jujitsu Rabbi and the Godless Blonde is like looking into the windows of compelling people you want to both meet and love. By the end of the book you will do just that." --Jenny Lawson, #1 New York Timesbestselling author of Let's Pretend This Never Happened
"Let me be clear: I've never met the author, and I had neither the time nor the inclination to blurb this book, but I started reading her odd, engrossing, tragicomic coming-of-adulthood tale and couldn't stop." --Deborah Copaken Kogan, author of The Red Book and Shutterbabe
"I'm kvelling!! Rebecca Dana's brilliant memoir touchingly and daringly juxtaposes the mysterious world of Orthodox Jewry with the even more mysterious world of fashion. I was amused and ver clempt, all at the same time." --Simon Doonan, author of Gay Men Don't Get Fat
"Rebecca Dana's story is a lot like New York City--bustling and busy, packed with Jews and jobs, faith and friendship, accident and ambition. With Jujitsu Rabbi and the Godless Blonde, Dana joins the ranks of women who have come to New York, forged identities on their own alongside improbable allies, and lived to tell the tale with wit and grace." --Rebecca Traister, author of Big Girls Don't Cry
"This is the beautifully told story of every smart young woman's start in the big city, where dreams first come true and then they rain like hell all over you. Rebecca Dana is wise yet self-effacing, hysterical but dark. This book is the perfect photograph of the last agonies of being young." --Choire Sicha, The Awl
"A fantastic read. Will make you want to take your life by the horns." --Morgan Spurlock, Academy Awardnominated documentary filmmaker

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