Being Jewish: The Spiritual and Cultural Practice of Judaism Today begins with a legend.

In the months before a Jewish child is born, it is visited in the womb by the Angel Gabriel. There, in the warmth and silence of the mother's body, the angel teaches the baby all of Jewish learning--the Torah, the rituals, the holidays, the deepest truths of Jewish wisdom. The baby absorbs it all, just as it takes nourishment from its mother. But suddenly, as the baby is about to be thrust into the world to eat and breathe on its own, the angel presents it with a similar intellectual challenge. Right before birth, Gabriel strikes the child on the upper lip, and all the teachings are instantly forgotten.

Being Jewish, by the former New York Times religion reporter Ari L. Goldman, takes up where the legend of "Gabriel and the Infants" leaves off. The book presumes, as the legend suggests, that "Jewish knowledge is not external, removed from life, but something inside: the very stuff of life that must be reckoned and recovered". Incorporating elements of memoir, history, theology and cultural criticism, Goldman's book is a guide for the re-discovery of Judaism's essential traditions, organised in three sections that correspond to cycles of Jewish life ("The Jewish Life", "The Jewish Year" and "The Jewish Day"). This is a beautifully written distillation of the learning and wisdom of one of the best religion journalists of our time. --Michael Joseph Gross