From one of the country’s most vision­ary rab­bis, a redis­cov­ery of the poten­tial for reli­gious expe­ri­ence to trans­form con­tem­po­rary life

​“Pre­tend You Believe offers an invi­ta­tion into faith and rit­u­al prac­tice that both skep­tics and seek­ers didn’t know they need­ed.… I loved this book and found wis­dom on every page.” —Rab­bi Angela Buch­dahl, New York Times best­selling author of Heart of a Stranger

Many of us long for spir­i­tu­al belong­ing and con­nec­tion, only to run up against our con­fu­sion and dis­com­fort with orga­nized reli­gion. Noa Kush­n­er under­stands this well. As the found­ing rab­bi of The Kitchen, a ground­break­ing Jew­ish con­gre­ga­tion in San Fran­cis­co, she has helped thou­sands of peo­ple into a rela­tion­ship with reli­gion they nev­er thought they would or could expe­ri­ence.

In this con­cise, soul-stir­ring book, Kush­n­er offers a pic­ture of reli­gion not as some­thing we design or con­sume, but as some­thing we enter, just as we are. What if we tem­porar­i­ly set aside state­ments of belief and instead approach reli­gion as some­thing we do? Kush­n­er pro­pos­es we can then pur­sue the pro­found ques­tions this per­spec­tive reveals. How is prayer sup­posed to work? Which comes first, reli­gion or ethics? Why should we be reli­gious? Through imag­i­na­tive sto­ry­telling and a plain­spo­ken, acces­si­ble teach­ing of Jew­ish sources, as well as hard-won lessons from her own rab­binate, Kush­n­er cre­ates an ele­gant, thought­ful guide for any­one who has won­dered about the lim­its of today’s sec­u­lar world­view and is curi­ous about what reli­gion might have to offer. Writ­ten in a Jew­ish idiom but open to read­ers of all back­grounds, Pre­tend You Believe is a pow­er­ful med­i­ta­tion on God and human­i­ty, respon­si­bil­i­ty and for­give­ness, love and doubt, progress and jus­tice. With this book, Kush­n­er has cap­tured the won­der of reli­gious feel­ing and inscribed an invi­ta­tion to read­ers everywhere.