What defines our identity? What gives us a sense of "rootedness" in one
place or another? What determines the places and communities in which we
feel at home?
In this book, Rabbi David Goldberg grapples with the idea of
rootlessness - the feeling of never quite belonging.
As a young Jewish boy growing up in Manchester, Goldberg felt slightly
removed from the northern city, a feeling which continued through
education at Oxford University and rabbinic training at the Leo Baeck
College. Goldberg has always argued the advantages of being both English
and Jewish, the recipient of a double heritage that embraced William the
Conqueror and Magna Carta on the one hand, and Abraham and Moses on the
other. For him, broadly-based, eclectic liberal humanism has been more
enriching than religious parochialism, and being familiar with two
cultures, therefore able to adapt almost anywhere in a western civic
milieu, makes for a more rounded personality. Yet in this book he faces
the realities of being "rootless," unravelling the different pieces of
identity and community which shaped him - and in doing so, identifies
the factors which shape us all as individuals.
