"I am a wandering Jew, and a very confused Christian."
So writes acclaimed New York Times columnist David Brooks in "The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life," his newly-published memoir of his spiritual journey designed to assist readers in coping with personal crisis. Brooks maintains that professional success alone cannot provide personal fulfillment. Thus, he embarks on a search for spiritual meaning. A public intellectual deeply learned in religious sources, he engages a broad range of teachers, including Abraham Heschel, Joseph B. Soloveitchik, and Reinhold Niebuhr. Their writings point him in the direction of finding personal meaning through relationships, quest for social justice and searching for God.
"God-talk" appears problematic for many Jews. While 84 percent of Americans report having a mystical experience at some point in their lives, American Jews tend to be the most secular of Americans with the lowest rates of weekly attendance at religious services. Moreover, as Brooks notes, in contrast to the "Christians (who) were all over me," praying for him and encouraging his journey, he found rabbis to be of little help.
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