Shalom

Shalom Auslander's new book, Foreskin's Lament, is one of those rare memoirs that grabs you by the collar (like God grabbing Job's) and quite forcefully takes you for "little ride" (as the mobsters say).

"There's no need to provoke Him. I've been on God's chessboard long enough to know that every move forward, every bit of good news--Success! Marriage! Child!--is just another Godly gambit, a feign, a fake, a setup; it seems as if I'm making my way across the board, but soon enough God calls check, and the company that hired me goes under, the wife dies, the baby chokes to death. God's pick-and-roll. The rope-a-Lordy-Dope. God was here, God was there, God was everywhere."

See?