Book Review: My Jesus Year
Shelf Awareness Magazine
10.31.08

by Harvey Freedenberg

In this strikingly original memoir, Benyamin Cohen, the son of an Orthodox rabbi, spends a year striving to rejuvenate his Jewish faith in an unlikely place--among the Christians of his native Georgia. My Jesus Year stirs together keen-eyed journalism and a spiritual quest to create a book that can be read both for its heartfelt examination of one man’s religious faith and as a revelatory tour of the landscape of Christian life in the U.S. today.

Despite a lifelong fascination with Christianity (he grew up in a house across the street from a Methodist church), Cohen makes it clear he’s not looking for a new faith to supplant his traditional Judaism. Throughout his “Jesus Year” he never abandons his Jewish practice, praying three times daily and adhering to Judaism’s myriad and often arcane ritual commandments. But it’s that very ritual that’s transformed him into “an observant Jew who simply went through the motions while failing to reach the spiritual depths of being a member of the tribe.” Through his intense exposure to Christianity he’s hoping to discover a spiritual elixir to refresh his feelings about his own faith.

Like a hungry diner at an all-you-can-eat buffet, Cohen strives to sample every variety of Christian practice. He spends a Sunday morning with thousands of worshippers in a megachurch, accompanies two young Mormon missionaries to a session with one of their converts and visits a Trappist monastery. He’s perplexed by the appeal of Ultimate Christian Wrestling and even enlists a Catholic friend to sneak him into a confessional. Cohen’s account is made more intriguing by the fact that his wife is the daughter of a Methodist minister who herself had converted to Judaism before they met. Her family’s Christmas gift to him of a Talmud is one of the story’s more startling moments. Focusing less on theology and more on what William James called the “varieties of religious experience,” he’s refreshingly nonjudgmental, refusing to yield to the temptation to condescend to the faith of others. In contrast to Shalom Auslander, one of his Orthodox contemporaries who raged against his traditional upbringing in the recent memoir, Foreskin’s Lament, Cohen substitutes an appealing angst and self-deprecating humor for corrosive rage.

By the time Cohen reaches the end of his journey he strikes us as a mature Dorothy concluding, after her visit to Oz, “There’s no place like home.” Or, as he puts it more colorfully, and with only the slightest touch of irreverence, “Hanging out with Jesus has made me a better Jew.” Hanging out with Benyamin Cohen in this spirited, spiritual memoir offers its own ample pleasures. --Harvey Freedenberg

Shelf Talker: In this heartfelt and captivating memoir, a rabbi’s son goes searching among Christians to find his Jewish faith.

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