AM I A JEW?

Introspective and fascinating, AM I A JEW? takes readers on a literary journey, defining not only one man’s answer to the ultimate question, but also revealing the ways others choose to answer it, from strict Orthodoxy to the loosest form of Reform.

Magazine editor Ted Ross was nine years old when his mother told him that their family was no longer Jewish. “We’re Unitarian,” she declared. For the rest of his childhood, Ted was Christian in Mississippi with his mother and Jewish when he visited his father in New York. As an adult, he wondered why his mother chose to hide her background, and more importantly, whether or not he wanted to reclaim it for himself and his young children. Inspired by an article he wrote for Harper’s magazine about a lost tribe of Jews in the American Southwest, Ross finally decides to confront his mother about the complicated reasons she shed her identity and—consulting rabbis, Orthodox practitioners, Jews for Jesus and hipsters along the way—decide his own. Am I a Jew? chronicles Ted’s attempt to answer a seemingly simple but ultimately complicated question, for himself and millions of others. What makes someone Jewish? Is it culture, religious observance, genetics or something else? The question seems obvious, except that the most sophisticated and rabbinical minds have struggled to answer it. It’s silly, except millions have lost their lives depending on their response. It’s religious, except when an atheist asks it. It’s a question as ancient as the First Temple but as contemporary as present-day conflicts between Hasidim and goyim. Comp titles include Shalom Auslander's Foreskin's Lament and Girl Meets God by Lauren Winner. Ted Ross is the features editor for Men's Journal magazine and a former editor of Harper's magazine. Co-founder of the parenting blog DadWagon, his writing has also appeared in The New York Times, and Harper's, among others.