Living Jeishly A Snapshot of a Generation [Hardcover]

In the Jewish communal world, engaging 20- and 30-somethings is a hot button issue: How do we get young Jews to feel connected to Israel? To affiliate with traditional Jewish institutions? To care about Jewish continuity, ritual and tradition? As a member of this exclusive community, Stefanie Bregman set out to tackle these questions and sought out to compile a collection of personal essays and memoirs from Jewish 20- and 30-somethings across the country. Charming and diverse, here is an engaging chorus of voices much greater than the sum of its parts. Stefanie Pervos Bregman is the Manager of Digital Communications at the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago, Associate Editor of JUF News and blogger-in-chief of Oy!Chicago, a website for Jewish 20- and 30-somethings. Stefanie earned her Bachelor of Arts in Journalism from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and completed her Masters Degree in Jewish Professional Studies from the Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies. Stefanie and her husband Michael live in Chicago with their bichon poodle, Bialy. Engaging young Jewish adults in their 20s and 30s is challenging to say the least, but a new collection of personal essays and memoirs from young American Jews hopes to enlighten and possibly bridge the gap. The book is a slim but vibrant volume filled with fascinatingly diverse viewpoints on what it means to be young and Jewish. In her prologue, [Bregman] notes its difficult to define her generation, something which becomes increasingly clear in the essays featured&.The majority are written by Jewish professionals and bloggers, all of whom are in some way connected to the larger Jewish community&While its difficult to define the wishes and desires of this generation, Bregman does see some reoccurring themes: a willingness to learn lessons from the past, a desire to redefine Jewish rituals, a refusal to label themselves by denominations or movements, a re-examination of relationships and marriage, an ability to finlÃ&