November 23, 2001

What Does It Mean to Be a Jew Today?

By ALVIN SNIDER

In Allegra Goodman's knowing and very funny novel Paradise Park, the protagonist, a New Agey seeker named Sharon Spiegelman, falls in with a young Hasidic rabbi and his wife. Some Hasidic communities discourage potential followers, but Sharon is singled out for an aggressive outreach effort. When she tells the rabbi, "See, Davidl, what I'm looking for is to be inspired, and reborn, and transformed," he excitedly responds, "Hasidus is Judaism like that!" and has her read the Tashma, a thinly

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