原作者：Lauren F. Winner

译者：hazeljoyful

离婚可没那么简单。我跟犹太教紧紧绑在一起，就像我的父母彼此绑在一起。他们现已离婚，但他们还有女儿，所以有时仍在婚礼或毕业典礼上见面，有时也在电话上交谈，商量合买一份贵重的生日礼物，送给我们姐妹俩。

我把所有的犹太教书籍都送人了，也抛下一切犹太习俗，但当我与其他基督徒在一起时，却意识到犹太教塑造了我如何看待基督教。它影响我怎样读圣经，怎样思想耶稣，怎样理解祂谈论律法之轭的含义。我发现自己心中不时哼唱犹太歌曲。我想，我已经打发掉一些书籍、门柱圣卷（mezuzot）和烛台，却没有放弃自己看世界的模式，或所知晓的那些描述神的字句，而那些模式和子句大多是犹太式的。

……

两年之后，当我搬回纽约开始博士学位时，不得不学习另一些事情：如何在众人皆知我是正统犹太人的社区作一个基督徒。我不晓得如何向我的犹太朋友开口，说我已成为基督徒；不晓得如何向过去的教授解释，为什么我现在可以在犹太教新年和赎罪日时来上课；甚至不晓得对我那好客的天主教朋友说些什么，她欢天喜地迎接我回到纽约，已在东区的一家犹太洁食乳品餐厅订了晚餐的位子。

原文：

Divorce doesn't come easy. I am as bound to Judaism as my parents are to one another. They're not married anymore, but they have daughters, so they still see each other sometimes, at weddings and college graduations, and sometimes they talk on the phone, about going in together on an expensive birthday present for me or my sister.

I gave away all my Jewish books and let go of all my Jewish ways, but I realized, as I spent time with other Christians, that Judaism shaped how I saw Christianity. It shaped the way I read the Bible, the way I thought about Jesus, the way I understood what He meant when He talked about the yoke of the law. I found my heart sometimes singing Jewish songs. I thought I had given away some books and mezuzot and candlesticks. I hadn't given up the shape in which I saw the world, or the words I knew for God, and those shapes and words were mostly Jewish.

...

When, two years later, I moved back to New York to begin doctoral work, I had to learn something else: how to be a Christian in a neighborhood where everyone knew me as an Orthodox Jew. I didn't know how to tell Jewish friends that I had become a Christian, didn't know how to explain to old professors why I now could attend classes during Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, didn't even know what to say to my accommodating Catholic acquaintance who, delighted that I was back in New York, had made dinner reservations for us at a kosher dairy restaurant on the East Side.

Girl Meets God, pp10-11.

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译后小议：

这是一本我读了又读的书，非常好看，作者以睿智、博学、生动而贴近生活的方式来讲述自己的信仰旅程。她出自一半犹太血缘的家庭，爱上并皈依犹太教，后来却又被耶稣吸引，成为基督徒。在从正统犹太教徒到基督徒的转身当中，她曾有过深刻而真实的信仰身份挣扎。读者中那些曾有过从不信到信、从这种信仰模式转换到那种信仰模式经历的，均能在此书中找到共鸣。喜欢犹太文化的读者，也可在书中真实触摸日常生活中的点滴文化体验。至今尚未看到中译本，希望有出版社愿意翻译出版这本好书！不过好消息是国内网站上可以买到原版。