"Jews are a people with a land, a history, wisdom, and heart. Doing ritual acts makes those ideas concrete and connects us with our past, our God, and our people," writes Ari L. Goldman, a former New York Times religion reporter and author of The Search for God at Harvard. During a sabbatical year in Jerusalem with his family, he took a hard look at Judaism and came up with this book. Calling himself "an Orthodox pluralist," Goldman sees himself as someone who believes that "the right answer for me is not the answer for everyone."

This substantive volume is divided into three sections: "The Jewish Life" focusing on ceremonies associated with birth, coming of age, marriage, and death; "The Jewish Year" with an overview of the major holidays and the rituals associated with them; and "The Jewish Day" examining the role of prayer, dietary laws, and ethical behavior. Throughout this work, Goldman reveals the variety of practices available to believers. Or as the Jewish historian Jacob Rader Marcus put it: "There are six million Jews and six million Judaisms."

There is a treasure trove of insights here into a wide range of Jewish rituals and practices. For example, after a death, mourners observe a week-long period called Shiva; their friends prepare a meal using round foods such as eggs to symbolize the circle of life. During Shavuot, some Jews stay up all night studying the Torah, a custom that originated among mystics of the Northern Israeli town of Safed in the sixteenth century. On the second day of Rosh Hashanah, believers go to the edge of a river or lake and symbolically throw away their sins in a ritual known as Tashlich.