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    Jujitsu Rabbi and the Godless Blonde: A True Story
    Unavailable
    Jujitsu Rabbi and the Godless Blonde: A True Story
    Unavailable
    Jujitsu Rabbi and the Godless Blonde: A True Story
    Audiobook6 hours

    Jujitsu Rabbi and the Godless Blonde: A True Story

    Written by Rebecca Dana

    Narrated by Rebecca Dana

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    The ultimate fish-out-of-water tale . . . 

    A child who never quite fit in, Rebecca Dana worshipped at the altar of Truman Capote and Nora Ephron, dreaming of one day ditching Pittsburgh and moving to New York, her Jerusalem. After graduating from college, she made her way to the city to begin her destiny. For a time, life turned out exactly as she'd planned: glamorous parties; beautiful people; the perfect job, apartment, and man. But when it all came crashing down, she found herself catapulted into another world. She moves into Brooklyn's enormous Lubavitch community, and lives with Cosmo, a thirty-year-old Russian rabbi who practices jujitsu on the side.

    While Cosmo, disenchanted with Orthodoxy, flirts with leaving the community, Rebecca faces the fact that her religion-the books, magazines, TV shows, and movies that made New York seem like salvation-has also failed her. As she shuttles between the world of religious extremism and the world of secular excess, Rebecca goes on a search for meaning. 

    Trenchantly observant, entertaining as hell, a mix of Shalom Auslander and The Odd Couple, Jujitsu Rabbi and the Godless Blonde is a thought-provoking coming-of-age story for the twenty-first century.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateJan 24, 2013
    ISBN9781101605028
    Unavailable
    Jujitsu Rabbi and the Godless Blonde: A True Story
    Author

    Rebecca Dana

    Rebecca Dana is an author and journalist. She has been a staff writer for The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, The Daily Beast and The New York Observer. She lives in Manhattan with her husband.

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    Reviews for Jujitsu Rabbi and the Godless Blonde

    3.5/5

    54 ratings20 reviews

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    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      I loved this book. It's a fun read. Dana's writing is beautiful one moment and humorous the next. While there are not earth-shattering discoveries in the book, it is still a worthwhile read for those of us who have been disenchanted by organized religion. The story also gives insight to those who have been so captivated by religion that we shut our eyes to the beauty of others.
    • 3/5

      I picked this book up because of the title. I happen to be a godless blonde so it spoke to me. Both Rebecca - the godless blonde and Cosmo - the jujitsu rabbi are searching for something. Meeting, living with, getting to know the other person opened up worlds to each that they didn't know they were missing. Rebecca introduces Cosmo to War and Peace and hamburgers and Cosmo shows Rebecca religion, tradition and family. I liked how Rebecca showed me a world I never even knew existed and I got a picture of what she thought but I never felt that she was judging or preaching.
      November 2013
    • 2/5
      This is easy to read fluff, and I don't think the author would disagree with this assessment. A young woman who grew up on "Sex and the City," a television show after which she modeled her life, Rebecca Dana writes an enjoyable memoir about enduring a life-altering breakup and her time afterwards rooming with a rabbi in a Jewish community in Brooklyn. Read it in a day, read it in a week: this book is a fun distraction, and you will learn a bit about Judaism along the way.

      The reason I gave the book two stars instead of three is actually a reflection on the editing. There were some continuity errors and such that were confusing and took away from the flow of the writing.
    • 4/5
      Brilliant! A wonderful true story about finding yourself. Rebecca Dana's tale of moving to an Orthodox neighborhood and finding a friend who is beginning to think he doesn't want to be a Rabbi anymore is almost too comical to be true. Rebecca, Cosmo, and the people in their lives sound like fictitious characters and it's sometimes hard to believe they exist. This is one of those autobiographies that inspire while also serving as a reminder that even having a seemingly fabulous doesn't guarantee happiness.
    • 3/5
      I find many memoirs to be a bit pretentious as they meander through time and space attempting to give an individual's life greater meaning by connecting it to a larger societal context. Jujitsu Rabbi and the Godless Blonde certainly falls into this category, especially as the author admits to the shallowness of her life's ambitions. Rebecca Dana's dream from childhood is to move to New York, living the life depicted in Sex and the City. She achieves this dream with a job as a reporter giving her access to high profile parties and the perfect relationship. When the relationship falls apart her life is turned upside down and she begins to question if getting the life she wanted is really all it is cracked up to be. Moving into a Jewish neighborhood with a rabbi who is not a rabbi, she begins exploring another aspect of New York culture.While some of the descriptions and interactions were interesting enough I found little of substance to hold my attention. Dana seems to end with the conclusion that she is who she is but that she is also more based on her belonging to various micro-communities. I think that this is an essential truth that we all have and it doesn't take a year in Crown Heights or writing a book to discover it.
    • 4/5
      Dana's memoir reads like a novel. I like this book! I may one of the few women in America who has never seen an episode of Sex and The City and really doesn't know anything about Carrie Bradshaw expect that the poor woman is unfortunately rather homely so a lot of the references were lost on me! Well, that's not really true. I once won a rather large amount of money over a long period of time on a Sex and the City themed slot machine that required picking an engagement ring for Mr. Big (?) to buy umm Carrie, I think , and matching dresses appropriate to the other characters. I only mention that because that is what this book is like, a light and enjoyable read that I have already passed on to reader friend.My grandson asked me why there was a picture of a piece of bacon on the book I was reading. I didn't know at the time, makes perfect sense now!
    • 4/5
      I absolutely love New York City and wish I could live there. Because I can't, I look for books set in NYC, and this one seemed promising. I enjoyed the parts about the NYC "scene," including the interesting people that Dana met along the way. Yes, Dana's story was sometimes self-indulgent (as others have mentioned), but I forgive her for that. She is, after all, writing a memoir about her life, and she is entitled to tell it her own way. The aspect of the story that involves her Jewish rabbi roommate wasn't as interesting to me because Dana's religious explorations seemed a bit trite and superficial. Perhaps this was just too personal for Dana to go into great depth about. Overall, though, I enjoyed this glimpse into life in the big city.
    • 4/5
      This was a great memoir of a lost year in the Brooklyn. There's nothing particularly suprising or revelatory to find here, but I enjoyed taking the journey with the author on her way out of breakup depression.
    • 2/5
      I wanted to like this book but overall I was disappointed in it. Perhaps I am the wrong type of reader. It may appeal more to people in the same age range of the author. I had trouble relating to her point of view. Her description of New York City life felt shallow. I particularly disliked the opening scene which unfortunately set me off on the wrong foot. I was hoping for more spiritual insight, both into the Jewish faith and the author's personal journey.
    • 4/5
      Bare in mind I am a 60 plus year male and I am still giving the 4 stars which is testament to how well written the book is and how well Ms. Dana portrays topics that are really not high on my interest meter like New York City, fashion week and Lubavitch Judaism. I can honestly say I learned a lot and Ms. Dana writes about her experiences good and bad realistically with a great sense of humor like when she is battling mice in her apartment room. The author grew up in Pittsburgh and always dreamed of the Sex in the City New York. She found some of that life but it what else she found that made this memoir well worth reading.
    • 4/5
      I'm a self-confessed cultural voyeur. Based on my LTER selections I would guess the all-mighty algorithm believes me to be an African -American southern man (and now Jewish to boot). In reality I'm mid-western, middle-class, middle-aged -you get the picture. So of course I was immediately attracted to this book. The exact opposite of [Mennonite in a Little Black Dress]. Sign me up.In that respect it was a disappointment. Don't get me wrong, it's well-written a d enjoyable enough, just not as voyeuristic as I has hoped.
    • 4/5
      I picked up this book solely for the title. Jujitsu Rabbi and the Godless Blonde is not a memoir I would normally select. Although I do read lots of biographies/memoirs about journalists, typically I pick memoirs of journalists with a bit more age on them. Barely 30 is not enough age. Surprisingly, to me, I really enjoyed it … blasted through it and found much to think about within its pages. Rebecca Dana grew up in the suburbs, graduated from an Ivy League school and attained all her life goals (which she formulated from her watching of Sex and the City) soon after graduation. She had wanted to live in Manhattan, have a cool job, cool clothes, cool apartment and a cool guy. When that imploded, she wound up sharing an apartment with a Rabbi who was going through a religious crisis and living in an area of New York City that houses ultra-Orthodox Jews – and rodents. Let’s just say, the author and Cosmo learned a lot from each other and changed in countless ways big and small.I’m glad I came across the title … and trusted my intuition that I’d like it.
    • 3/5
      I received this book from the Early Reviewers program.I have somewhat mixed feelings about this book. I really enjoyed the author's descriptions of her interactions with the Hasidic Jewish community and her time as Cosmo's roommate. Even the parts about the work she did as a fashion reporter were interesting. I got seriously annoyed when she (frequently) devoted time to describing all the more worthwhile things she could be doing with her life rather than being a fashion/celebrity reporter. It came off to me as exceedingly whiny, and destracted from the more entertaining parts of the book.
    • 3/5
      When I requested this book from the Early Reviewer’s Program, I didn’t realize it was a memoir, not a novel. As a novel, I would have thought some of the events to be too silly to be believable, particularly the Jujitsu part. I didn’t see that being worthy of being part of the title. I found the book to be well-written, but I wish the author had kept the book more focused on her experiences with her roommate and the orthodox Jewish community. I found the book an easy and quick read, but I think I would have liked more depth.
    • 3/5
      This book was a really slow read, I could not connect with the author, I learned some interesting details about Jewish customs, but not very much happened in this book. Some thoughts were important but overall it was not much of a story.
    • 3/5
      This is a VERY New York tale of a truly brilliant but lonely journalist in search of life's meaning. Rebecca Dana finds her job and social life very satisfying and believes she is happy until she isn't. She moves to Crown Heights, Brooklyn sharing an apartment with a rabbi who is going through his own identity crisis; straddling the fence of non-orthodox concepts i.e. unkosher food, reading novels, while still maintaining a foothold in the orthodox community. Rebecca meets orthodox families and befriends a number of the women, and signs up for a class for those new to orthodoxy. She does this more for the "experience" than for any heartfelt desire to become orthodox. She is truly a journalist; accumulating as many life experiences under her belt so she can write about them without truly CARING about her subjects. While I like that she is a realist, and that she recognizes hypocrisy in her own circles and in the orthodox community, she is unfairly more critical of the orthodox. What I've gleaned from Jujitsu Rabbi and the godless Blonde is that... Rebecca Dana is... a New York snob.
    • 3/5
      Good title. That's what I thought when I received the book. However, I'm not a huge fan of memoir so I wasn't itching to crack it open. When I did, it was off to a slow start and I found myself grateful that it was printed on thick pages so I could get through it pretty quickly.Somewhere along the line though, I found myself getting more and more interested, thinking, you know... I could have been friends with this girl. We're roughly the same age, and like her, my biggest dream growing up was to get as far away from my small midwestern home town as I possibly could. I made it as far as Connecticut, discovered that the east coast and I had a mutual dislike of each other, and after about a year and a half of misery, spent a summer jetting around the globe teaching English in Thailand and backpacking around Europe before moving back home to begin graduate school. Somewhere in there, however, I did manage to grow up. And while I had some very interesting experiences, I'm not sure that they are book worthy.While the author has had some interesting experiences as well... I'm not entirely convinced they were book-worthy either. The writing was clever and I always appreciate someone with a good vocabulary and an interesting story to tell. I think this book gets a lot right but in the end, I found myself wishing for more focus on Cosmo, the orthodox Jewish, Russian roommate than on the author herself. It seems like he had a much more interesting and deep story to tell. The authors own story is self described as a bit shallow.All that's to say, I think this author has a lot of talent and I like her style and sense of humor. I'd gladly read a sequel about whatever became of Cosmo.
    • 3/5
      Jujitsu Rabbi and the Godless Blonde is billed as a "true story" by author Rebecca Dana, formerly a senior correspondent for The Daily Beast. Dana tells the tale of a rather dark and confusing time in her life. Forced from her Manhattan apartment by a breakup with her boyfriend, she resorts to Craigslist to find a place to live. Dana ends up in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, renting a room from Cosmo, a Russian emigre. Cosmo had trained as a Rabbi at a seminary of the Chabad Lubavitcher sect. He is having a crisis of faith, and is working at a copy shop shop in Brooklyn awaiting his green card. He is also becoming a serious student of jujitsu.Dana is a non-practicing Jew, and is astounded to find herself living in the center of ultra-Orthodox Judaism in America. She is in her late 20's and is really floundering in her life in general. She came to New York after college to live the lifestyle of Carrie Bradshaw (from Sex and the City, in case you've been living under a rock). All her relationships (friends, boyfriends, workmates) are shallow and self-centered. So-here she is. Living a split existence between her high style, high living Manhattan work life, and her rodent infested room in Brooklyn. Dana is so numbed by her breakup she doesn't seem to mind the long commute or the odd neighborhood she has chosen.Jujitsu Rabbi is a quick and easy read. Unfortunately, I think too many people are writing memoirs today. And a self-centered, immature 27 year old does not have the most interesting life experiences. Dana just bounces from one experience to another, and rarely seems to learn anything from either her errors or successes. This book is an unimportant piece of fluff. Once again, though, I have to thank the LibraryThing Early Reviewer for sending this on to me.
    • 4/5
      One of the things I love about New York City -- where I now live after growing up in the western US -- is how such a grand mix of people come together in a big, anonymous city but still interact by happenstance. Rebecca Dana's memoir of her late 20s shows just how odd the interactions can be: she, a young, hip, thoroughly modern journalist ends up roommates with Cosmo, a Hasidic rabbi in Crown Heights. As is evident from the premise alone -- no devout Hasid would be sharing an apartment with a woman not his wife, even platonically -- Cosmo is having something of a crisis of faith. Despite this, he introduces Rebecca to a world that she, Jewish by heritage though not devout, has never experienced before. Indeed, she describes the world of Crown Heights's Lubavitcher community as stepping into 19th century Russia, an image that many of us who have incidentally encountered Hasidim in the streets of NYC know well. She brings a journalist's eye but a clever young woman's comic vision to describing these encounters, including shabbat dinners, religious education classes, and even a wedding.I love reading about the Hasidic communities of New York, so I was delighted to receive this book through LibraryThing Early Reviewers. Perhaps because I have read so many other books about NYC Hasidic communities, however, I was somewhat disappointed. The book starts out very slow, with a long interlude about the author's breakup that precipitated her move to Crown Heights. I understand why this was included, but it took too long and didn't elicit much sympathy from me. I found her "fish out of water" story much more compelling, and definitely much more comedic! The middle sections, where she takes on new experiences and meets a variety of Hasids -- some through Cosmo, some by them throwing rocks at her "immodest" work clothes in the streets -- were well-written, insightful, and often quite funny. But toward the end of the story, the pacing starts to flounder again. The author sets about finding herself through meeting Sex and the City's Candace Bushnell and visiting New Orleans, but neither anecdote has much depth to it. Forgivable, yes: she's an admittedly shallow twentysomething. But since this is a memoir, I hoped for more reflection, or at least more comedy. I also felt like Cosmo's side of the story went unfinished: we don't learn much about his crisis of faith's conclusion or how he fits into his community afterward. All we really learn is that he dates a non-Hasid for a while, and then they break up, and... that's it. I wanted to learn more!Overall, an entertaining book whose chapters had some hits and misses. Clearly a first book, but the author is skilled writer with a keen eye for detail. I didn't love this debut, but I would read something from her in the future.
    • 4/5
      If Oscar and Felix are the original Odd Couple, Rebecca and Cosmo aren't far off, at least on the surface, in this sweet memoir of their brief time as roommates. Rebecca is a journalist who writes primarily about pop culture and fashion. She's twenty-seven years old and just coming out of a failed relationship that she expected to be her happily ever after when she moves from her beloved Manhattan to the Orthodox community of Lubavitchers in Brooklyn. Even more startling than moving from the incredibly secular world she inhabits is the fact that she moves in with Cosmo, a Russian immigrant and ordained rabbi who is having a crisis of faith. In a way, both of them are floundering around without any clear direction for their future and their exposure to the life of the other helps to nudge them gently in the direction they each ultimately want to travel.Rebecca long dreamed of moving to New York and escaping her native Pittsburgh, a place she never felt she belonged. She is very much a secular Jew so the fact that she ends up on the fringes of an Orthodox neighborhood when she and her boyfriend split up can only be put down to the vagaries of Craigslist ads rather than a desire on her part to examine any religious heritage. The fact that very conservative and traditional Cosmo preferred a male roommate and yet acquiesced easily to Rebecca's interest in moving in is less easily explainable. But no matter how they ended up in the same two bedroom, kosher-kitchen apartment, it is certain that each of them is a foreign country to the other one.On the surface a modern fashion-conscious journalist with access to some of the most exclusive and fantastic parties in New York has less than nothing in common with a traditional Lubavitcher rabbi waiting for his green card, learning jujitsu, and working in a copy shop in Brooklyn. And yet, both of them are searching for something to replace the dreams they once entertained about their futures and which haven't worked out the way they had hoped. They are faced with questions and finding meaning in their lives, a coming of age in adulthood when they'd already thought their questions would be long since answered. Dana is very open and honest about her life in transition, her slowly developing friendship with Cosmo, and the seemingly inexplicable interest she develops in the women of the community on the edges of which she finds herself. She is clearly not perfect herself and never suggests as much as she hunts for identity. The tale is humorous at times and poignant at others. Quite well-written, it is very definitely a New York tale and the cast of people who walk across the page could only exist in a city like New York. But they are interesting and appealing, their uncertainty is thought-provoking, and spending time in the pages of their lives, especially Dana's and Cosmo's, is interesting and worth the time.