BETRAYED is an interesting story that graphically reveals what happens when someone of strong Jewish heritage converts to Christianity. The story is told excellently in a book that recently reached me. It was first published more than 20 years ago and continues to be republished, having gone through already, more than 20 re-publishings, which point proves its popularity.
The author, Stan Telchin, is crucially involved in the tale that he tells. He is the head of a Jewish household that becomes torn between love of a daughter who converts to Christianity, and love of Jewish traditions that have kept the family together with strong identity, through thick and thin times, over many years.
He is not a particularly religious person, but he enters the fray on a mission to re-convert his daughter. He is also a skilled writer. For 35 years, we are told, he had been a magazine and book editor. Not surprisingly, therefore, he writes parsimoniously. Indeed, some of the sentences are racy but always, the dialogue is tight and telling. The essential elements of a good story are all there conflict, confrontation, and chilling moments of suspense. The plot seems fictional as life imitates art. The story is shot-through with passion that reveals intense love and intense hate, yet, underlying the whole story is researched information that instructs accurately concerning fundamental perspectives on the world religions of Judaism and Christianity. The book's short chapters facilitate the gripping telling of the story. Each chapter builds up suspense teasingly, and then releases critical information in doses with potency, leading to an exciting climax.
The blurb on the back cover summarises well what the book accomplishes: "A deeper, fuller awareness of Judaism and Christianity; a healing attitude that can free you from the bitterness of the most heated conflicts; one family's resolution of a seemingly irreparable split".
Every Christian as well as every Jew should find this book not merely good reading, but profoundly instructive, regarding sociology, anthropology, psychology, and theology.
- B.H.
