"What do you do when it's late on a Friday afternoon, you're a practicing Orthodox Jew, and your father lies dying in a hospital? This is the dilemma that opens With An Outstretched Arm. The directive to "honor your parents" and the injunction to "guard the Sabbath" become metaphors for the conflict between the author's lifelong desire to please her father and her more recent commitment to ancient traditions that he disdains. With An Outstretched Arm recounts the author's journey from the liberal, southern Reform Judaism of the 1940s and '50s to the warm embrace of a more traditional Orthodox Jewish life. It relates how chance encounters propelled her, people and books inspired her, and tragedy tested her, challenging her to ask difficult questions. How can she balance the ethical and ritual sides of Judaism? Will she always feel like an outsider? How can she overcome the existential loneliness that follows her young daughter's death? Where can she find God's outstretched arm?"--
