Go the edge of suspense with Iris Johansen and click here for your message from Iris. They marry and instill in seven of their eight children a lifelong devotion to Catholic tradition. Yet it is also a tale ideal for Hanukkah, the Jewish holiday of rededication to God, which began at sunset Sunday. Stephen Dubner, the eighth child, grows up to discover his Jewish soul and rededicate himself to the faith of his grandparents. It's a family memoir.
Most families have histories defined by radical choices.
He addresses what it means to choose a religion rather than accept it as an unquestioned inheritance, like the genes that gave Dubner his black curls and chocolate-pudding eyes. He means the deep, life-altering conversion when one takes on a specific landscape of belief, fenced by commandments, infused with mysteries. Abraham doesn't know where he's going or what he will see, and yet he goes. It's not a leap of logic or even, yet, a leap of faith, and yet it is a leap to the unknown. And we all have this inside ourselves, to ask questions and to journey.