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A Writer Who Gets You If You’reYoung, Jewish, and Conflicted
Characters struggle to reconcile their Judaism with their old Phish bootlegs in 10 entertaining stories
You’re young, you’re Jewish, and you’re praying — well, maybe not praying — for a short Seder.
Who understands you?
Among fiction writers, there’s Gen Ex-er Elisa Albert, author of How This Night Is Different (Simon & Schuster, 2006).
Back when she was in her 20s, Albert came out with this smart, funny, and often bawdy collection of stories about young Jews looking for meaning in rituals that include a Seder, a wedding, bat mitzvah, a Yom Kippur service, and a packaged tour of Auschwitz. It’s for anyone cool enough to see the comic potential of characters such as a 31-year-old single woman who goes home for Passover with that least inappropriate of ailments, a yeast infection.
How This Night Is Different had a bottle of red Passover wine on the cover of the first edition, and a newer one has replaced it with what looks like a splash of white wine. The different covers pose and implicit question: How can you be a good Jew if you prefer Chardonnay when the Seder, in your family, calls for a Manischewitz red?
