One Book, One
Windsor
“Bagels and
Grits, a Jew on the Bayou”
Jennifer
Anne Moses left behind a comfortable life in the upper echelons
of East Coast Jewish society to move with her husband and
children to Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Searching for connection to
her surrounds, she decided to volunteer at an AIDS hospice. But
as she encountered a culture populated by French Catholics and
Evangelical Christians, African Americans and Cajuns, Altruistic
nurses and nuns, ex-cons, street-walkers, impoverished AIDS
patients, and healers of all stripes, she found she had embarked
on an unexpected journey of profound self-discovery.
In a keenly
observed memoir that embraces both pathos and humor, Moses takes
us into a world that is strange and sad but also suffused with
the holy. As witness to dire poverty and extreme adversity,
Moses discovers a deeper commitment to her own faith—a Judaism
that asks not for blind belief, but rather daily commitment.
She recounts the challenges of taking on a life committed to God
in a postmodern world that has little use for the divine.
Telling her story of redemption with an honesty that goes right
for the guts, she leaves the reader with new hope.
