Making Meaning Out of Madness: A Jewish Journey by Miranda Portnoy

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How does a saucy, leftist Jewish girl, a victim of egregious child abuse, end up happily married to a noble and prestigious Orthodox Jewish bachelor?

A surreal, devastating journey leaves Miranda Portnoy alone with nowhere to turn. Scapegoated by a murderer, betrayed by her lover, and driven to her knees, Portnoy witnesses something astonishing when she turns to the God she doesn’t yet believe in.

Making Meaning Out of Madness: A Jewish Journey reveals Portnoy’s voyage from traumatic American Jewish childhood to marrying a choice Orthodox Jewish husband in Jerusalem. In a harrowing yet comical memoir, which brings her by turns into the arms of a Tantric master and face to face with the Divine, double-crossed by Ivy League administrators and encountering less than savory activities at an Orthodox Jewish seminary, Portnoy emerges from it all with faith.

In wry, athletic prose wrought by tribulation, Portnoy acquaints her audience with mysticism, healing, and redemption as she experiences these herself in this inspiring survivor’s tale.

In the second section of her book, Portnoy challenges agnostic assumptions in three well-researched, provocative essays. Taking aim at the spiritual skepticism fostered by contemporary academia, she offers an utterly novel, commonsense proof of classic Jewish principles.

This memoir and essay collection is bound to capture the hearts and minds of Jews who have wandered too far from the God who loves them–compelling them, and all of us, to not only reexamine our convictions, but perhaps, rediscover our souls.

Year first published: 2021