Archive for category religion
Benyamin Cohen on My Jesus Year
Every once and awhile a book concept hooks you in the first sentence. Such was the case with Benyamin Cohen’s My Jesus Year. “One day a Georgia-born son of an Orthodox rabbi discovers that his enthusiasm for Judaism is flagging. He observes the Sabbath, he goes to synagogue, and he even flies to New York on weekends for a series of ’speed dates’ with nice, eligible Jewish girls. But, something is missing. Looking out of his window and across the street at one of the hundreds of churches in Atlanta, he asks, ‘What would it be like to be a Christian?’ … So begins Benyamin Cohen’s hilarious journey that is My Jesus Year — part memoir, part spiritual quest, and part anthropologist’s mission.” Next month the book will be released in paperback. With that in mind, I recently email interviewed him. My thanks to Cohen for his time and to Kelly Hughes of DeChant-Hughes & Assoc Inc. for arranging it.
Tim O’Shea: What was the hardest part of the journey for you, both in terms of the actual experience and/or writing about it?
Benyamin Cohen: The hardest part of the journey for me was when I went to Confession: The entire year, wherever I went, I let people know I was Jewish. But at Confession, since technically only Catholics are allowed, I had to pretend to be someone else. And I’m not an actor. The other hard part about Confession was that it was an audience of one. At all the other churches, I could sit in the back and be a fly on the wall, watching what was going on and taking notes. But in the confines of the Confession booth, it was just me and the priest. Scary stuff.
Susan E. Isaacs on Angry Conversations With God
Posted by admin in comedy, philosophy, religion, spirituality on July 22, 2009
While researching for another interview, I was introduced to Susan E. Isaacs‘ new book, Angry Conversations With God. And I’m glad I found out about it–and even better got a chance to interview her. First some background on the book:
“Angry Conversations With God began when Susan hit hit forty and found herself loveless, jobless, and living over a garage. When a churchy friend told Susan that she needed to look at her relationship with God was it like a marriage, Susan decided to take God to marriage counseling.
Angry Conversations chronicles Susan’s spiritual history, from childhood faith to a midlife crisis, and all the bizarre church experiences in between.”
And now for some info on the author:
“Susan is an actor, writer and comedienne with credits in TV, film, stage and radio, including Planes Trains & Automobiles, Scrooged, Seinfeld, and My Name Is Earl. She is an alumnus of the Groundlings Sunday Company and has an MFA in screenwriting from the University of Southern California.”
My thanks to Isaacs for the interview. Keep an eye out for her this fall, as she goes on a multi-city tour, promoting the book.
Tim O’Shea: Most religious memoirs do not have a tinge of irreverence to them, did you fear alienating your potential audience by going this route?
Susan E. Isaacs: People who don’t handle irreverence or extreme language shouldn’t read Jeremiah, Elijah, or St. Paul. Like in Philippians 3, Paul considers his previous accomplishments “loss” compared to knowing Christ? The original Hebrew for “loss” is a vulgar term for excrement. But we can’t print St Paul’s original intent because we’re Christians. I think there’s a difference between gratuitous irreverence, and irreverence that’s necessary to the character and the story. I took out all but two or three instances of profanity where I felt they were necessary to show the character’s desperation. Like, in one instance I spelled it out phonetically to show how violent my father’s cursing sounded to me as a child.