Wendy Goldberg has it all planned out. She’s going to Israel to research and write on newly religious American Jews who live there. She will ask them difficult and unsettling questions about their life path and motives to get the raw material that will pave the way to her future academic glory. All she has to do it write it up and she’ll have a provocative and fresh dissertation, sure to win kudos and land her a plum job.
On the plane to Israel, she has a conversation with a staunchly critical yet fervently religious professor from her religious studies department at Princeton. Suddenly, questions seem to find her. What kind of person and Jew is she? Can one have doubts and hold on to faith at the same time? Can a skeptic connect to some kind of religious identity?
Questioning Return is a novel that follows the progress of Wendy’s year abroad, the immersive experience of Israel and the rhythm of life there proving both disorienting and satisfying, in turn. Over the course of the year, her desire to remain an outside observer in her new surroundings slowly fades. Abruptly, she is forced to realize that her fate isn’t separate from that of people around her, when a student she interviews commits a horrible act right after their conversation. Tragedy leads Wendy to unforeseen places to seek knowledge and love.
Though Wendy Goldberg planned to ask questions of others, she finds the ones that truly matter are those she asks of herself.
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