Surprised By God
Although the details of Ruttenberg’s experience—including wild parties in California’s dotcom boom, a lonely Shabbat in Tel Aviv, and praying in tefillin—may be unique, her description of her growing awareness of the power of ritual, the support of community, and religion as relationship will resonate with all sorts of spiritual seekers.”
–Publishers Weekly
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At thirteen, Danya Ruttenberg decided that she was an atheist. Watching the sea of adults standing up and sitting down at Rosh Hashanah services, and apparently giving credence to the patently absurd truth-claims of the prayer book, she came to a conclusion: Marx was right.
As a young adult, Danya immersed herself in the rhinestone-bedazzled wonderland of late-1990s San Francisco—attending Halloweens on the Castro, drinking smuggled absinthe with wealthy geeks, and plotting the revolution with feminist zinemakers. But she found herself yearning for something she would eventually call God. As she began inhaling countless stories of spiritual awakenings of Catholic saints, Buddhist nuns, medieval mystics, and Hasidic masters, she learned that taking that yearning seriously would require much of her.
Surprised by God is a religious coming of age story, from the mosh pit to the Mission District and beyond. It’s the memoir of a young woman who found, lost, and found again communities of like-minded seekers, all the while taking a winding, semi-reluctant path through traditional Jewish practice that eventually took her to the rabbinate. It’s a post-dotcom, third-wave, punk-rock Seven Storey Mountain—the story of integrating life on the edge of the twenty-first century into the discipline of traditional Judaism without sacrificing either. It’s also a map through the hostile territory of the inner life, an unflinchingly honest guide to the kind of work that goes into developing a spiritual practice in today’s world—and why, perhaps, doing this in today’s world requires more work than it ever has.
MORE PRAISE FOR SURPRISED BY GOD
Profile on Ruttenberg and Surprised By God in the Jewish Daily Forward, and a smaller profile about Ruttenberg’s ordination.
Profile on Ruttenberg and Surprised By God in Nextbook.
Profile on Ruttenberg and Surprised in j.: the Jewish News Weekly of Northern California.
“In this memoir of her journey from punk-partying atheist teenager to rabbi-in-training (yarmulke and all), Ruttenberg chronicles the awakening and intensification of religious life. The book’s breezy style, mixing personal anecdotes with reflection, is balanced by thoughtful narrative about what religion is and what it demands of its adherents. The author weaves in her religious studies training gently, applying occasional references to classical theologians (Kierkegaard and Maimonides), medieval mystics (Teresa of Ávila), and modern thinkers (Thomas Merton and Elliot Dorff) as they illuminate a particular insight or experience. Although the details of Ruttenberg’s experience—including wild parties in California’s dotcom boom, a lonely Shabbat in Tel Aviv, and praying in tefillin—may be unique, her description of her growing awareness of the power of ritual, the support of community, and religion as relationship will resonate with all sorts of spiritual seekers.”
–Publisher’s Weekly
“Those who have been torn between their desire for a closer relationship with the divine and their distaste for organized religion will find Danya Ruttenberg’s journey from punk rock-feminist/atheist to Jewish rabbi thought-provoking, challenging, and entertaining.
An atheist from the age of 13, Ruttenberg had neither explanation nor context for the luminous times when she felt close to something that was greater than she was. It was the determination to be true to her inner reality that eventually led to a personal expression of the divine in the outward forms of her own Jewish heritage and community. Having delved deeply into the meanings behind the laws and rituals of Judaism, she found in them a greater truth, one that can encompass both religious observance and the attitudes and actions of an educated citizen of the twenty-first century.”
–Spirituality and Health Magazine
“On the one hand, her deepening belief is an intensely personal experience. On the other hand, she learns that religion is–and, by definition, must be–an communal endeavor. She dismisses the contemporary American practice of assembling a personal faith from bits and pieces of many religions as a symptom of endemic consumerism. Religion, she argues, is not a form of self-help or self-actualization. For her, it is service. It is submission of the self to a larger reality and a purpose. There’s something paradoxically radical in Ruttenberg’s embrace of organized religion and its traditions, and she knows it…. [a] thought-provoking memoir.”
–Bitch: Feminist Response to Pop Culture
In Surprised by God, Danya Ruttenberg, a young, recently ordained Conservative rabbi, articulately describes her struggle to maintain aspects of her old self - an intellectual, hip, self-proclaimed atheist - while she embarks on a long spiritual journey that eventually leads to a life of faith and the rabbinate….One way of resolving the crisis - a path chosen by many young Jews new to an observant lifestyle - is to radically break with the past. Old passions, associated with the life before faith, are stashed away deep in the back of the brain. Uncultivated, they fade away, becoming nothing but a distant memory or a dull yearning. Punk music and rap, surfing and breakdancing, gay rights, social activism, globalization and racial equality are sidelined. The naturally universalistic tendencies of unaffiliated young Diaspora Jews yearning to connect with all of humanity are replaced by the more idiosyncratic obsessions of the newly observant Jew struggling to adapt to the mores, traditions and historical baggage particular to the “chosen people.”
For Ruttenberg this is not an option. Her sense of self is too strong to be utterly negated. Although she embraces a fairly stringent form of Jewish observance, which includes no traveling or using money on Shabbat, a kosher diet and praying three times a day, she nevertheless maintains ties with diverse circles of friends, both Jewish and not, and tries to integrate elements of her old self with the new.
–The Jerusalem Post
“[A] thoughtful and articulate memoir…. While many of the experiences are similar to others’ in her generation—love, loss, and identity struggle—her style of combining personal experience with a wide range of philosophic responses gives her narrative greater texture. Ruttenberg is as likely to quote Sufi mystics and Catholic saints as she is to refer to Jewish writers; she is seeking a truth that transcends doctrine“….
–BUST Magazine
“…for anyone who has that same inkling (as in, there must be more than this) or has wrestled with organized religion (it doesn’t have to be Judaism). Ruttenberg does a masterful job of weaving in quotations from religion’s greatest thinkers while taking us on her contemporary pilgrimage of sorts. It’s entirely relatable, which in my experience, is unusual for a religious text. It’s young. It’s hip. And it’s still profoundly serious.”
“Ruttenberg no doubt began her book with a moment of teenage rebellion in order to make her gradual commitment to a life of Jewish practice seem all the more striking. But the true beauty of her story is found not in this large transformation (teenage atheists are a dime a dozen) but in the moments of small transformations. This is where Ruttenberg’s prose is at its powerful best…. Ruttenberg sprinkles her text with brief quotes from mystics and other religious teachers…. Throughout, though, it is her voice that emerges most strongly as we accompany her on her religious journey, “the strange and brambly path we didn’t know that we’d been trying to find all along.”
–Lilith Magazine
“A young woman who swore off religion (and God) as a teenager embarks on a not so conventional journey back into the spiritual fold, and finds a way to reconcile twenty-first century life with traditional Judaism — without doing damage to either.”
“Subtitled “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Religion,” Danya Ruttenberg’s very personal account includes: rejecting the sterile religion of her childhood, dancing her way through punk culture, the cancer-induced death of her mother, and her path through a meditation-oriented Judaism that eventually opened the doors for a deep encounter with God, found through her own religion. At every point, Ms. Ruttenberg is sharp in her insights about the world and about herself. Soon to become an ordained rabbi, Ruttenberg gives us reason to be hopeful about the future of American Judaism.”
–Tikkun
“Ruttenberg, who was recently ordained as a rabbi, decided at the age of 13 that she was an atheist. Then in the late 1990s, she experienced a spiritual awakening, taking what she describes as “a winding, semireluctant path through traditional Jewish practice that eventually took me to the rabbinate.” Ruttenberg writes that for her the work of the religious life has been about reconfiguration and reintegration, determining which parts she has outgrown and which could grow with her. The author, who lives in Los Angeles, lived for some time in Jerusalem. A tremendously satisfying memoir of spiritual awakening from the author of a variety of books and periodicals, including Encyclopedia Judaica.”
–Booklist
“She… focuses, with candor and depth, on tranformative religious practice.”
–Jewish Woman
“Ruttenberg’s honesty, depth, wit, and eloquence light up every page.”
—Carol Lee Flinders, author of Enduring Lives: Portraits of Women and Faith in Action
“The philosopher in me loves the unfettered and deep intellectual challenges to which Ruttenberg subjects religion in general and Judaism in particular. The rabbi in me appreciates how she wrestles with Judaism in as intense a way as Jacob wrestled with the angel. The person in me loves her unmitigated integrity and honesty. All in all, Surprised by God is truly a treat!”
—Elliot Dorff, Rabbi, Ph.D., author of Knowing God: Jewish Journeys to the Unknowable and distinguished professor of philosophy, American Jewish University
“Danya Ruttenberg shares the story of her journey toward embracing observant Judaism. What makes this story fascinating and urgent is that Ruttenberg never stops thinking and asking hard questions. She reminds us that loving religion is a matter of heart and soul—and brain. And that it something to which I say, Amen.”
—Leora Tanenbaum, author of (forthcoming) Taking Back God: American Women Rising Up for Religious Equality
“Danya Ruttenberg marshals beautiful writing and a prodigious intellect, and, leavening it all with a hefty dose of wit, tells a compelling story that has something to teach everyone who picks it up, regardless of how spiritual or religious (or not) they are.”
—Lisa Jervis, cofounder of Bitch: Feminist Response to Pop Culture