- Paperback: 512 pages
- Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd; New edition edition (3 Mar 1994)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0140132473
- ISBN-13: 978-0140132472
- Product Dimensions: 19.3 x 12.4 x 3 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 281,982 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
Wherever there is a Jew there is a journey; for a Jew to go travelling in search of his Jewishness is therefore doubly Jewish. But as Howard Jacobson's journey takes him via the Catskill Mountains, Manhattan, Los Angeles, Eilat, Jerusalem, Tiberias, Haifa and Sefat, to say nothing of Stamford Hill and Llandudno, he finds there is more to being Jewish than schmalz and self-ridicule.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
10 of 13 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Howard Jacobson's highly humourous description of his search to find his Jewish identity is part-travelogue, part-psychotherapy and hugely tongue-in-cheek. He describes his travels throughout America, the UK and beyond, encountering Jews along the way and trying to get to the essence of what it is to be Jewish. His observations of human nature are hilarious and the chapter on the Hasidic Jews of Manhattan's Jewellery District are particularly evocative. The book's lack of pomposity and self-importance makes it a refreshing and honest read. Thoroughly recommended.
3 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
A stunning, genealogical journey. Witty. Painful. Beautiful. One of my top 3 Howard Jacobson's (with Kalooki Nights and The Very Model of a Man).
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
8 reviews
9 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Enlightening
15 Feb 2000
Format:Paperback
No hatred in this book, although plenty in the remarks of two of the on-line reviewers who are like bit part players in the book itself. Jacobson is erudite, fair, modest, compassionate and compelling. He doesn't pretend to be writing an academic investigation, more a personal journey, and he has the decency to admit that it's an inconclusive one. There is, of course, no point in spending time and money on a book like this if you lack learning and humour, of if you believe that on matters of religion and identity you already have all the answers.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Thoroughly enjoyable Jewish travel stories
20 July 2010
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Howard Jacobson has written a very funny, sometimes poignant, and always insightful book about his travels to various Jewish Communities in the US, Europe, and Israel. His wit is rapier sharp, and his commentaries are always right on the spot. I found myself laughing out loud, and annoying my wife by reading long passages to her, thereby spoiling her fun.
6 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Lighten Up, Why Don't You?
3 Mar 2001
Format:Paperback
Roots, Schmoots: Journeys Among Jews is, first of all, funny. One should not come to it expecting to read a balanced, well-researched history/sociology of Judaism, Israel or the Diaspora. Think more along the lines of taking a long, relaxed (but neurotic as all get-out) trip with a very funny man in search of something even he can't quite identify.The chapters describing his time in the US are hilarious and poignant at once. The chapters on Israel are quite well done, capturing the author's exasperated love for the nation and its people, and his often wayward search for justice. Jacobson tries to avoid sentiment at all costs, yet continually finds himself caught up short by a lump in the throat. A very good, very funny travel book. A very good, very funny story of one person's hunt for himself. Not for the compulsively or competitively serious.
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