With All My Heart, With All My Mind: Thirteen Stories About Growing Up Jewish

by Sandy Asher

Benjy has nightmares about his upcoming Bar Mitzvah ceremony. Rachel's grief over Grandma Hannah's illness turns her away from her temple. Jaci wrestles with peer pressure by day and angels by night, and when Cain and Abel double-date... well, growing up has never been easy.As these and nine other stories in "With All My Heart, with All My Mind" demonstrate, growing up Jewish adds its own twists and turns to the challenge. As we approach the end of the millennium, what does "growing up Jewish" mean? How can young people reconcile centuries of tradition with the modern world? Can they embrace their religion "with all my heart, with all my mind"?

Award-winning author and editor Sandy Asher posed these and other questions to thirteen Jewish writers: herself, Eve B. Feldman, Merrill Joan Gerber, Jacqueline Dembar Greene, Johanna Hurwitz, Eric A. Kimmel, Sonia Levitin, Carol Matas, Gloria D. Miklowitz, Susan Beth Pfeffer, Ruth Minsky Sender, Phyllis Shalant, and Jane Breskin Zalben. From the last days of Masada to the future colonization of the moon, these stories provide unique and personal insights. in the interviews following each story, the authors discuss their own experiences growing up Jewish.

These are stories that will make you laugh, cry, think, and above all, help you to explore what it means to be a Jew.

A portion of the money generated from the sale of this book will be donated to MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger.

176 pages, Unknown Binding

First published November 1, 1999

About the author

Sandy Asher, a playwright and children's author, is probably best known for her young-adult novels and other prose works for young readers. Drawing many of the ideas and characters for her writings from her childhood memories, Asher has earned critical praise and numerous awards for novels such as Just like Jenny, Things Are Seldom What They Seem, and Everything Is Not Enough. In addition to fiction, Asher has also edited the story collections On Her Way: Stories and Poems about Growing up Girl and the award-winning With All My Heart, with All My Mind: Thirteen Stories about Growing up Jewish, which collect works that address many of the same adolescent concerns Asher confronts in her fiction.