Searching for My Brothers: Jewish Men in a Gentile World

Shortly after becoming Bar Mitzvah recently, my son asked, "what does it mean to be a REAL man, dad?" For an instant, I wondered if he was insinuating that he'd never met one.The first words that came to mind were those spoken to be by my Grand-Father in a similar conversation some 30 years ago ... "Don't confuse an erection with your manhood."Thanks to Rabbi Salkin's book, the conversation with my son has gone far beyond my Grandad's one liner. "Searching For My Brother" had a profound impact upon me. I find myself drawn back to it, rereading passages over and over, highlighting items for discussion with my son.This invaluable book is more than a compelling and thought provoking read ... it is not just a Manual for being a Mensch ... but also for raising one!Rabbi Salkin uses Torah, Talmud, Midrash and personal anecdotes to draw a wonderful picture of Judiasm's view of a "real man" ... stressing life in which work, family, prayer and even sex, live in balanced harmony.Perhaps most powerful are Rabbi Salkin's personal experiences with Anti-semitism ... one sided run-ins with local thugs as an adolescent, and a potentially humiliating experience on national TV.What's more, Rabbi Salkin's thorough analysis of Jewish manhood is a mere 246 pages. I found it a fast, yet entertaining and powerful.Perhaps the best thing I can say about Searching For My Brothers is that I intend to deliver copies to my brothers.Thanks again Rabbi Salkin!

It's a wonderful book! I probably used up an entire pen, noting the passages that were especially meaningful, instructive, inspiring. Of course, since I'm a rabbi, I'll get a sermon of two out of it, but more important, it really spoke to me as a Jewish man. I hope that the book will be widely read, and that other Jewish men will feel as cared for as I did when reading it.I particularly liked way Rabbi Salkin inter-wove poignant personal history with meaningful, gently delivered, easily digested scholarship. Great job.

Rabbi Salkin, 45, is the Senior Rabbi at the Community Synagogue on Long Island, NY. Because he found there were more "bars" than "mitzvahs" in modern bar/bat mitzvah celebrations, he authored the popular "Putting God on the Guest List." He also penned a book on how to bring God and tikkun olam into your worklife. It's an easy hop from worklife to manhood, and just as attention must be paid to Willy Loman, attention should be paid to Jewish manhood. And I don't mean joining the Promise Keepers, rooting for "Goldberg the Wrestler," or reading Susan Faludi's "Stiffed."Salkin derives the book's title from the Bible story of Joseph. Jacob sent his cloistered son, Joseph, out to the field to find his brothers... Salkin faces and poses several questions, which will whet your appetite for a good read. What did Joseph, dressed in his dandy coat of many colors, find? Why and for what was he searching? Was Joseph the quintessential Jewish male, who stayed at home while his brothers were in the fields? Was he like wimpy Jewish men who stereotypically don't know how to repair things, who read Outside Magazine rather than actually climb Everest? Do Jewish men cry? Did Joseph or King David cry? Is Yiddish the language of Irvings, Mendels and weakness? Is Hebrew the language of the strong Ehud's? Why are Jewish men portrayed as mice in Art Speigelman's Maus? Why did Bialik portray Jewish men as powerless cowards during the Kishinev pogrom? Why is the wicked son in the Middle Age Haggadah a soldier, and the good son a sage? Is a sedentary Jacob less masculine than the hunter Esau? Was Ishmael more manly than Isaac, since he was circumcised at 13 and not at 8 days? Was Isaac such a wimp that Eliezer had to find him a wife? Did the destruction of the Temple emasculate Jewish men? On the TV series, "Mad About You", why does the Paul Reiser character rely on the Bruce Willis character to show him how to be a tough, brawny male? Must we be like Macabees to be men? Why did the rabbi's ridicule the Masada zealots, the Macabees, and Bar Kochba. How does circumcision relate to a working man's balance between work and family? Is it a sin to read Playboy in Jerusalem?These are some of the questions that Salkin explores. Mixing Jewish history with is personal tales of sportsmanship, getting beat up as a newspaper boy, getting harassed on MSNBC, or getting harangued by a synagogue search committee chairman, Salkin helps Jewish men define masculinity, power, and issues of work, discrimination, love, libido, lust, image, circumcision, ambition, decency, pleasure, and whether God (Avinu Malkeynu) is a male, and whether it matters.