Includes bibliographical references (p. 418-421).

Introduction: Jewish Writing and Healing the World / Michael Lerner -- To Jewishness / Kenneth Koch -- The Melting Pot and Beyond: Jews and the Politics of American Identity / David Biale -- Poems: Reversion and What Kind of Times Are These / Adrienne Rich -- Justify My Love / Daniel Boyarin -- Ten Ways to Recognize a Sephardic 'Jew-ess' / Ruth Knafo Setton -- Redemption on East Tremont: The kindness of Christians and a seder's matzah helps the daughter of Mendel Beilis fix the old fears / Jonathan Mark -- News About Jews / William Safire -- Gay and Orthodox / Steve Greenberg -- Slipping the Punch / Philip Roth -- The Night Game / Robert Pinsky -- From The Roots of a Public Life / Joseph I. Lieberman -- From And What Is My Lifespan? / Yehuda Amichai -- Stories: Grandmother Eve, Consecrating the Ordinary, Blessing, and The Reward / Rachel Naomi Remen --

The Legacy: A Parable About History and Bobe-mayses, Barszcz, and Borscht and the Future of the Jewish Past / Irena Klepfisz -- Nishmat / Marge Piercy -- Starting on My Spiritual Path / Naomi Wolf -- On Renewing God / Zalman M. Schachter-Shalomi -- Eternity Utters a Day / David Wolpe -- A Kabbalah for the Environmental Age / Arthur Green -- Is God in Trees? / Dennis Prager -- The Emergence of Eco-Judaism / Arthur Waskow -- A Theology of Illness and Healing / Nancy Flam -- Death and What's Next / Rami Shapiro -- Eros and the Ninth of Av / Mordechai Gafni -- From the Book of Jewish Values / Joseph Telushkin -- Poems: Yom Kippur Sonnet and Science Psalm / Jacqueline Osherow -- From And Peace and Justice Shall Kiss / Rachel Adler -- From Imagining the Birth of a Nation / Ilana Pardes -- From the Red Tent / Anita Diamant -- From The Bible and You, the Bible and You and Other Midrashim / Yehuda Amichai -- Aaron's God - and Ours: A Yom Kippur Reflection / Sarah Polster --

Our (Meaning Women's ) Book-of-Esther Problem / Susan Schnur -- Cattle Car Complex / Thane Rosenbaum -- Force Fields / Martin Jay -- The Sanctuary / Alan Shapiro -- The Trivialization of Tragedy / Jonathan Rosen -- Hereditary Victimhood: The Holocaust's Life a Ghost / Zygmunt Bauman -- The Meaning of the Holocaust: Social Alienation and the Infliction of Human Suffering / Peter Gabel -- The New Historiography: Israel Confronts Its Past / Benny Morris -- Land for What? / Daniel Pipes -- Occupation and Antisemitism / Jerome Slater -- A Novelist's Optimism: Reclaiming the Jewish Tradition / Aharon Appelfeld -- From Booking Passage / Sidra Dekoven Ezrahi -- Poems: From In My Life, On My Life; Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Why Jerusalem?; and The Jewish Time Bomb / Yehuda Amichai -- Hovering at a Low Altitude / Dahlia Ravikovitch -- Making Judaism Cool / Jonathan Schorsch -- Old Man / C. K. Williams --

Poems: When You Come to Sleep with Me, Come Like My Father and Hebrew / Yona Wallach -- Esther and Yochanan / Nomi Eve -- The Twenty-seventh Man / Nathan Englander -- Against Logic / Rebecca Goldstein -- The Healing Power of Jewish Stories / Tsvi Blanchard -- The Complex Fate of the Jewish American Writer / Morris Dickstein -- Bellow at 85, Roth at 67 / Norman Podhoretz -- Jewish Writing and the Spiritual Journey: A Speculative Journey / Rodger Kamenetz -- The One Hundred Best Contemporary Jewish Books.