Writ­ten by authors born into the so-called ​“dilem­ma of inter­mar­riage,” the sto­ries in Half/​Life explore the expe­ri­ence of being raised in a half-Jew­ish home. Though each essay is dis­tinct, and the expe­ri­ences are vast­ly dif­fer­ent, each describes grow­ing up with­out a stream­lined iden­ti­ty, unsure of com­mu­ni­ty or reli­gious direc­tion. The authors exam­ine the com­pli­cat­ed rela­tion­ships they felt with the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty and the world at large. By turns trag­ic and fun­ny, reli­gious and heart­break­ing, angry and sur­pris­ing­ly famil­iar, Half/​Life rep­re­sents the alto­geth­er diverse mem­o­ries and reflec­tions of a hand­ful of men and women who have spent a life­time grap­pling with how to define them­selves, or not. What results from that strug­gle is a com­plex explo­ration, and some tru­ly bril­liant prose.