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Praying with Jane Eyre: Reflections on Reading as a Sacred Practice
"In these soaring, open-hearted essays, Vanessa Zoltan writes with fierce brilliance about suffering, survival, and the kind of meaning in life that can withstand real scrutiny."--John Green, bestselling author of The Fault in Our Stars and The Anthropocene Reviewed
A deeply felt celebration of a classic novel--and a reflection on the ways our favorite books can shape and heal us.
Our favorite books keep us company, give us hope, and help us find meaning in a chaotic world. In this fresh and relatable work, atheist chaplain Vanessa Zoltan blends memoir and personal growth as she grapples with the notions of family legacy and identity through the lens of her favorite novel, Jane Eyre. Informed by the reading practices of medieval monks and rabbinic scholars from her training at the Harvard Divinity School and filtered through the pages of Jane Eyre as well as Little Women, Harry Potter, and The Great Gatsby, Zoltan explores topics ranging from the trauma she has inherited as the granddaughter of four Holocaust survivors to finding hope, meaning, and even magic in our deeply fractured times. Brimming with a lifelong love of classic literature and the tenderness of self-reflection, the book also reveals simple techniques for reading any work as a sacred text--from Virginia Woolf to Anne of Green Gables to baseball scorecards.
Whether you're an avowed Eyrehead or simply a curious reader looking for a richer connection with the written word, this deeply felt and inspiring book will light the way to a more intimate appreciation for whatever books you love to read.
A deeply felt celebration of a classic novel--and a reflection on the ways our favorite books can shape and heal us.
Our favorite books keep us company, give us hope, and help us find meaning in a chaotic world. In this fresh and relatable work, atheist chaplain Vanessa Zoltan blends memoir and personal growth as she grapples with the notions of family legacy and identity through the lens of her favorite novel, Jane Eyre. Informed by the reading practices of medieval monks and rabbinic scholars from her training at the Harvard Divinity School and filtered through the pages of Jane Eyre as well as Little Women, Harry Potter, and The Great Gatsby, Zoltan explores topics ranging from the trauma she has inherited as the granddaughter of four Holocaust survivors to finding hope, meaning, and even magic in our deeply fractured times. Brimming with a lifelong love of classic literature and the tenderness of self-reflection, the book also reveals simple techniques for reading any work as a sacred text--from Virginia Woolf to Anne of Green Gables to baseball scorecards.
Whether you're an avowed Eyrehead or simply a curious reader looking for a richer connection with the written word, this deeply felt and inspiring book will light the way to a more intimate appreciation for whatever books you love to read.
272 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2021
110 people are currently reading
3175 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 211 reviews
February 15, 2021
4.5 stars. Really really enjoyed this book, and it definitely made me think. Jane Eyre is one of my favorite books and this makes me want to reread — haven’t done that in a while! Although I enjoyed the whole book, I particularly liked a few chapters: Ch 5: On Kindness, Ch. 9: On Women’s Anger (made me think about Bertha Mason Rochester in a whole new way!!!!), and Ch 12: On the Afterlife in Little Women.
A few quotes that really struck me and stuck with me throughout my reading: (my e-version didn’t have page numbers, but it’s toward the beginning of the book!)
“I am not the only person at sea with how to be a good person in this complicated time, where so many of us are disaffiliated from traditional religious institutions. I am not the only person who feels betrayed or let down by religion, while still longing for some of it. In times of Covid-19 and storms that seem to rise from the wrath of the earth as punishment for our sins of injustice we all need each other more than ever even though we are being told to be afraid of each other. Learning to treat each other as sacred is a longing that I know we all have in the face of this contradiction that is our reality”
“JK Rowling keeps messing with her own book through tweets that change the plot and keeps messing with our ability to live her by saying transphobic hateful things. But I do think we all need something to fill the voids that find us in the dark of night and give us things to hold onto in scary times.”
“I will survive” is a promise of change. As the wellness industry co-opts the idea of self care and capitalism tries to turn our bodies into constant productivity machines, maybe “I will survive” is the commitment we all should be making. We need to take care of ourselves enough to survive with the fire within us intact. We need to survive in order to witness and in order to be agents of change”
Also: I cheered at Vanessa’s Caddie Woodlawn reference!! I adored that book when I was a kid, and I still have my childhood copy :) I didn’t *love* the Gatsby chapter, but I’m not a fan of the book — but I did appreciate the thoughtful analysis.
I already preordered this book on Bookshop.org before I got an early digital copy, but I can’t wait to read it in print — I feel like I will get even more out of it the next time I read it. As a longtime listener of HPST, I felt like I could *hear* Vanessa in my head. I particularly liked the blend of memoir and sacred text and analysis.
A few quotes that really struck me and stuck with me throughout my reading: (my e-version didn’t have page numbers, but it’s toward the beginning of the book!)
“I am not the only person at sea with how to be a good person in this complicated time, where so many of us are disaffiliated from traditional religious institutions. I am not the only person who feels betrayed or let down by religion, while still longing for some of it. In times of Covid-19 and storms that seem to rise from the wrath of the earth as punishment for our sins of injustice we all need each other more than ever even though we are being told to be afraid of each other. Learning to treat each other as sacred is a longing that I know we all have in the face of this contradiction that is our reality”
“JK Rowling keeps messing with her own book through tweets that change the plot and keeps messing with our ability to live her by saying transphobic hateful things. But I do think we all need something to fill the voids that find us in the dark of night and give us things to hold onto in scary times.”
“I will survive” is a promise of change. As the wellness industry co-opts the idea of self care and capitalism tries to turn our bodies into constant productivity machines, maybe “I will survive” is the commitment we all should be making. We need to take care of ourselves enough to survive with the fire within us intact. We need to survive in order to witness and in order to be agents of change”
Also: I cheered at Vanessa’s Caddie Woodlawn reference!! I adored that book when I was a kid, and I still have my childhood copy :) I didn’t *love* the Gatsby chapter, but I’m not a fan of the book — but I did appreciate the thoughtful analysis.
I already preordered this book on Bookshop.org before I got an early digital copy, but I can’t wait to read it in print — I feel like I will get even more out of it the next time I read it. As a longtime listener of HPST, I felt like I could *hear* Vanessa in my head. I particularly liked the blend of memoir and sacred text and analysis.
December 16, 2021
This book wasn't at all what I expected, and unless you read multiple reviews, I suspect it won't be what you expect, either. There were times I was frustrated, there were several times I disagreed completely with the author, and there were many moments where I said, "This wasn't what I came for." But there were definitely compelling passages, and it may prompt you to find your own path to reading as a sacred, or at least intellectually stimulating, practice.
I wasn't familiar with Zoltan, who (in the introduction) pitches the book as a series of "sermons." And in some ways it is, but it feels much more like a memoir. She's an atheist, Jewish, chaplain (which she's come to after a series of other careers), and although I am an agnostic Jew, and expected to find many positions of commonality with her, her writing is suffused with a dark cloud. She is the four-time grandchild of Holocaust survivors, someone who grew up in LA, and whether it's that or the lack of Yiddishkeit (Eastern European/Jewish ways of being/living, in a northeast-ish manner), she feels more like a Raymond Carver character in ways that make her "dark and twisty" (as Shonda Rhimes would write). I struggled to see things her way. She talks about her embrace of pop culture (well, Harry Potter) but she couldn't be any further from a Gilmore Girls kind of watcher.
I kept marking spots where I just didn't get what Zoltan meant. She states that, "In Judaism, prayers are prewritten and always in Hebrew" and that it felt like a betrayal of Judaism to pray in English. Huh? Someone who has a degree in chaplaincy (from Harvard, no less) should know better. I'm older than the author, and grew up with prayers written in English in Hebrew School and in temple, and we were *always* encouraged to make up our own. It's not a newfangled thing. This statement, almost at the beginning of the book, makes Zoltan feel like an unreliable narrator on the topic of treating secular texts as sacred, on what and how the sacred is used *in the faith we (agnostically) share*.
This feeling of strange otherness — an author I should inherently get, but whom I find puzzling — made it hard for me to get close to the material. This is not to say it wasn't interesting; it just rarely felt like Zoltan was focuses on reading as a sacred experience, ostensibly what the book was about.
Instead, it seems mostly about lessons she's taken from her own life (her grandparents' marital upheavals, her parents' lack of trust in others, her desire to feel like the kind of person who would have saved and hidden Anne Frank, her inability to come to terms with the idea of an afterlife given that she's an atheist and doesn't believe in it, etc.).
In all of these cases, she seems to have figured out what she wants to talk about in her own life and then pulled from Jane Eyre (a secular text with which I'm very familiar, if not a fan) to intermingle elements. For 200 pages or so, the book provides these "sermons" of her thoughts on fear, commitments, liminal in-between-ness, kindness, destiny, heartbreak, resentment, women's anger, love, and betrayal, all in twinned relationship to Jane/Rochester/Bertha and her own family. OK. No harm, no foul.
But for much of the book, it feels like minimal attention is given to reading a secular text as sacred and most of the attention is given to textual/literary analysis (psychological, feminist, and otherwise) of aspects of the book. I didn't always agree (see below) but it was always an interesting read. I'm not sure some who hasn't read Jane Eyre a few times would appreciate the nuances, but it's a fair attempt.
She definitely lost me in the chapter On Love where she notes that she most loves Rochester when he realizes that he could rape Jane to keep her, possess her bodily, but knows he will not because then he'd never possess her soul. Zoltan acknowledges that it sounds awful to say that she's praising Rochester for not raping Jane, but also notes that she believes that a man who "truly, deeply understands and respects consent is quite a rare and radical thing." Dark. Twisty.
I absolutely know that consent is complicated, but her positioning gets worse and worse. Zoltan compares the fact that Rochester knowing he has the power but choses not to use it is a saving grace for his character, and she compares it to how she's afraid she won't be able to put her dog down (should the time come) because her love is so powerful that she won't be able to let go. Both rape of a woman and letting an animal suffer are horrible things, but her comparisons are, at best, flawed; at worst, she's just...odd. She claims love is "so close" to the feeling of wanting to consume someone/something. No, that's not love. That's jealousy. That's limerence and immaturity. That's not remotely love. So be forewarned, because this way Zoltan's brain works can be discomfiting.
So, as I said, the book is about 200 pages of Zoltan's family and personal history mixed with the reading of Eyre, with a faint interweaving of language about the process of reading secular texts as sacred. Then there's about 40 pages on dealing with the idea of an afterlife from reading about Beth in Little Women, hope and hopelessness in the Harry Potter books, and obsession in The Great Gatsby.
Then she FINALLY has a ten page "tool kit" on sacred readings and how to use books to gain insight on a more spiritual (non-religious) realm. Frankly, I was expecting more of that from the book. She talks about (and around) having a reading group, but with the exception of woman example of reading a particular passage from JE as a prayer, she seems to mostly forget that that's what the book is ostensibly about; reading as a sacred practice is a foreign enough concept that explaining it in greater depth would better serve the reader than some of her confessional bouts. For me, at least.
So, I was expecting a book that talked more intricately about how her literary analysis of Jane Eyre (and then the other books, half-heartedly mentioned at the end) can be applied as prayer, as self-understanding, as whatever-this-central-idea is supposed to be. Instead, I got a quirky, sometimes uncomfortable memoir about a woman who didn't seem to know what she wanted to do with her life, who doesn't seem to know how to talk to her parents about important things, who broke up with an important person in her life because she doesn't seem to be very good at communicating in relationships...with a lot of feminist and freshman-seminar literary analysis thrown in.
This is not to say the analysis wasn't good. Much of what she said matches what I learned in college and from later readings about the book(s). She's not wrong. But this isn't supposed to be a book of literary analysis; her substitution of the academic for the sacred makes promoting this book about using books as sacred seem pointless.
The writing quality was solid. If she were an academic in literary analysis, I'd be inclined to read more of her work if it went deeper. But because neither she nor I are people of faith or spirituality, I would have expected her to talk about what she pitches as "sacred" rather than so much that is quotidian.
So, if you love Jane Eyre the way I love Austen novels, you might just enjoy Zoltan talking about a book you love. Either way, go into the book expecting that this is not a guidebook to reading as a sacred practice, and that it's more memoir and self-therapy.
I wasn't familiar with Zoltan, who (in the introduction) pitches the book as a series of "sermons." And in some ways it is, but it feels much more like a memoir. She's an atheist, Jewish, chaplain (which she's come to after a series of other careers), and although I am an agnostic Jew, and expected to find many positions of commonality with her, her writing is suffused with a dark cloud. She is the four-time grandchild of Holocaust survivors, someone who grew up in LA, and whether it's that or the lack of Yiddishkeit (Eastern European/Jewish ways of being/living, in a northeast-ish manner), she feels more like a Raymond Carver character in ways that make her "dark and twisty" (as Shonda Rhimes would write). I struggled to see things her way. She talks about her embrace of pop culture (well, Harry Potter) but she couldn't be any further from a Gilmore Girls kind of watcher.
I kept marking spots where I just didn't get what Zoltan meant. She states that, "In Judaism, prayers are prewritten and always in Hebrew" and that it felt like a betrayal of Judaism to pray in English. Huh? Someone who has a degree in chaplaincy (from Harvard, no less) should know better. I'm older than the author, and grew up with prayers written in English in Hebrew School and in temple, and we were *always* encouraged to make up our own. It's not a newfangled thing. This statement, almost at the beginning of the book, makes Zoltan feel like an unreliable narrator on the topic of treating secular texts as sacred, on what and how the sacred is used *in the faith we (agnostically) share*.
This feeling of strange otherness — an author I should inherently get, but whom I find puzzling — made it hard for me to get close to the material. This is not to say it wasn't interesting; it just rarely felt like Zoltan was focuses on reading as a sacred experience, ostensibly what the book was about.
Instead, it seems mostly about lessons she's taken from her own life (her grandparents' marital upheavals, her parents' lack of trust in others, her desire to feel like the kind of person who would have saved and hidden Anne Frank, her inability to come to terms with the idea of an afterlife given that she's an atheist and doesn't believe in it, etc.).
In all of these cases, she seems to have figured out what she wants to talk about in her own life and then pulled from Jane Eyre (a secular text with which I'm very familiar, if not a fan) to intermingle elements. For 200 pages or so, the book provides these "sermons" of her thoughts on fear, commitments, liminal in-between-ness, kindness, destiny, heartbreak, resentment, women's anger, love, and betrayal, all in twinned relationship to Jane/Rochester/Bertha and her own family. OK. No harm, no foul.
But for much of the book, it feels like minimal attention is given to reading a secular text as sacred and most of the attention is given to textual/literary analysis (psychological, feminist, and otherwise) of aspects of the book. I didn't always agree (see below) but it was always an interesting read. I'm not sure some who hasn't read Jane Eyre a few times would appreciate the nuances, but it's a fair attempt.
She definitely lost me in the chapter On Love where she notes that she most loves Rochester when he realizes that he could rape Jane to keep her, possess her bodily, but knows he will not because then he'd never possess her soul. Zoltan acknowledges that it sounds awful to say that she's praising Rochester for not raping Jane, but also notes that she believes that a man who "truly, deeply understands and respects consent is quite a rare and radical thing." Dark. Twisty.
I absolutely know that consent is complicated, but her positioning gets worse and worse. Zoltan compares the fact that Rochester knowing he has the power but choses not to use it is a saving grace for his character, and she compares it to how she's afraid she won't be able to put her dog down (should the time come) because her love is so powerful that she won't be able to let go. Both rape of a woman and letting an animal suffer are horrible things, but her comparisons are, at best, flawed; at worst, she's just...odd. She claims love is "so close" to the feeling of wanting to consume someone/something. No, that's not love. That's jealousy. That's limerence and immaturity. That's not remotely love. So be forewarned, because this way Zoltan's brain works can be discomfiting.
So, as I said, the book is about 200 pages of Zoltan's family and personal history mixed with the reading of Eyre, with a faint interweaving of language about the process of reading secular texts as sacred. Then there's about 40 pages on dealing with the idea of an afterlife from reading about Beth in Little Women, hope and hopelessness in the Harry Potter books, and obsession in The Great Gatsby.
Then she FINALLY has a ten page "tool kit" on sacred readings and how to use books to gain insight on a more spiritual (non-religious) realm. Frankly, I was expecting more of that from the book. She talks about (and around) having a reading group, but with the exception of woman example of reading a particular passage from JE as a prayer, she seems to mostly forget that that's what the book is ostensibly about; reading as a sacred practice is a foreign enough concept that explaining it in greater depth would better serve the reader than some of her confessional bouts. For me, at least.
So, I was expecting a book that talked more intricately about how her literary analysis of Jane Eyre (and then the other books, half-heartedly mentioned at the end) can be applied as prayer, as self-understanding, as whatever-this-central-idea is supposed to be. Instead, I got a quirky, sometimes uncomfortable memoir about a woman who didn't seem to know what she wanted to do with her life, who doesn't seem to know how to talk to her parents about important things, who broke up with an important person in her life because she doesn't seem to be very good at communicating in relationships...with a lot of feminist and freshman-seminar literary analysis thrown in.
This is not to say the analysis wasn't good. Much of what she said matches what I learned in college and from later readings about the book(s). She's not wrong. But this isn't supposed to be a book of literary analysis; her substitution of the academic for the sacred makes promoting this book about using books as sacred seem pointless.
The writing quality was solid. If she were an academic in literary analysis, I'd be inclined to read more of her work if it went deeper. But because neither she nor I are people of faith or spirituality, I would have expected her to talk about what she pitches as "sacred" rather than so much that is quotidian.
So, if you love Jane Eyre the way I love Austen novels, you might just enjoy Zoltan talking about a book you love. Either way, go into the book expecting that this is not a guidebook to reading as a sacred practice, and that it's more memoir and self-therapy.
April 25, 2021
Vanessa Zoltan's Praying with Jane Eyre is balm for the world-and-word-weary soul. I give it 5 stars.
Zoltan, an accomplished podcast host (Harry Potter and the Sacred Text, Hot and Bothered, The Real Question) and Harvard Divinity School graduate, weaves personal tales and accessible, thoughtful textual analysis of beloved books such as Jane Eyre, Harry Potter, Little Woman, The Great Gatsby, and more. Zoltan is not afraid to get to the heart of the matter, even when the holistic view means you potentially encounter the object of your attention with warts and all. She examines her family's inherited trauma of Holocaust survivorship, her relationships, her chaplaincy work, and her continuous dialogue with the authors and characters of these novels. If you've ever want someone to intelligently, thoughtfully, deeply grapple with Bertha Mason or JK Rowling's transphobia but still whole heartedly love the positive life lessons one can grasp from Jane Eyre or Harry Potter, you've found your person.
Zoltan separates the book into different themes, focusing on what we can learn in our own lives even as we spend time in other literary worlds. She also gives some guidance as to how you can do this with your own chosen texts using traditional sacred reading practices (HPST fans will be familiar with many of these multidenominational and multidimensional methods).
In general, this is an honest, genuine, generous book. You do not have to be tied to any particular faith tradition to appreciate what is happening here (Zoltan, though raised Jewish, no longer practices, and always considers things from a humanistic perspective). I would, however, recommend you have read Jane Eyre, as spoilers for that particular text will be present (it's in the title, folkx).
Putting this book into action:
Florilegia is one of the many sacred text close reading practices denoted in this book. I collected some of my own Florilegia "sparklets" as I read (please note quotes in the actual print run may change, these were accurate in my ARC copy):
"Fear can be sacred just because it witnessed an atrocity and had the courage to stay afraid."
"She is demanding justice in this life."
"What do I want to practice on a daily basis to help ground me in the extreme circumstances?"
"It is not kindness if it is accidental. Kindness is brave and it is with intention."
"I am supposed to live a life of kindness, compassion, and empathy. But I always try to choose being a bitch over being someone's bitch."
Florilegia has us then ask: What stood out to me? What are these quotes saying about myself? What do these quotes mean next to one another, instead of in their usual places?
I am struck by how well these quotes flow together. As someone who has listened to Vanessa's podcasting journey and has used these podcasts to grow myself through my listening, I have been given a role model of how to claim space for myself, how to sit with things that are hard, how to be scared and still courageously remain, and how to be intentional. It also speaks to a desire to advocate for others, but also for myself - to feel free to *take* *up* *space*. As Jane herself would say, "I am no bird, and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will." With this book, Zoltan gives us some tools take up space for ourselves and our hearts. It has been a blessing to witness her journey and visually SEE her voice take up space in print form. She has done us a kindness with her intentionality in this book, and may we use this text to follow her example.
Again, 5 stars. Do check this one out.
I was (generously) sent an ARC by the author in exchange for an honest review.
Zoltan, an accomplished podcast host (Harry Potter and the Sacred Text, Hot and Bothered, The Real Question) and Harvard Divinity School graduate, weaves personal tales and accessible, thoughtful textual analysis of beloved books such as Jane Eyre, Harry Potter, Little Woman, The Great Gatsby, and more. Zoltan is not afraid to get to the heart of the matter, even when the holistic view means you potentially encounter the object of your attention with warts and all. She examines her family's inherited trauma of Holocaust survivorship, her relationships, her chaplaincy work, and her continuous dialogue with the authors and characters of these novels. If you've ever want someone to intelligently, thoughtfully, deeply grapple with Bertha Mason or JK Rowling's transphobia but still whole heartedly love the positive life lessons one can grasp from Jane Eyre or Harry Potter, you've found your person.
Zoltan separates the book into different themes, focusing on what we can learn in our own lives even as we spend time in other literary worlds. She also gives some guidance as to how you can do this with your own chosen texts using traditional sacred reading practices (HPST fans will be familiar with many of these multidenominational and multidimensional methods).
In general, this is an honest, genuine, generous book. You do not have to be tied to any particular faith tradition to appreciate what is happening here (Zoltan, though raised Jewish, no longer practices, and always considers things from a humanistic perspective). I would, however, recommend you have read Jane Eyre, as spoilers for that particular text will be present (it's in the title, folkx).
Putting this book into action:
Florilegia is one of the many sacred text close reading practices denoted in this book. I collected some of my own Florilegia "sparklets" as I read (please note quotes in the actual print run may change, these were accurate in my ARC copy):
"Fear can be sacred just because it witnessed an atrocity and had the courage to stay afraid."
"She is demanding justice in this life."
"What do I want to practice on a daily basis to help ground me in the extreme circumstances?"
"It is not kindness if it is accidental. Kindness is brave and it is with intention."
"I am supposed to live a life of kindness, compassion, and empathy. But I always try to choose being a bitch over being someone's bitch."
Florilegia has us then ask: What stood out to me? What are these quotes saying about myself? What do these quotes mean next to one another, instead of in their usual places?
I am struck by how well these quotes flow together. As someone who has listened to Vanessa's podcasting journey and has used these podcasts to grow myself through my listening, I have been given a role model of how to claim space for myself, how to sit with things that are hard, how to be scared and still courageously remain, and how to be intentional. It also speaks to a desire to advocate for others, but also for myself - to feel free to *take* *up* *space*. As Jane herself would say, "I am no bird, and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will." With this book, Zoltan gives us some tools take up space for ourselves and our hearts. It has been a blessing to witness her journey and visually SEE her voice take up space in print form. She has done us a kindness with her intentionality in this book, and may we use this text to follow her example.
Again, 5 stars. Do check this one out.
I was (generously) sent an ARC by the author in exchange for an honest review.
October 8, 2022
thank you, holly, for this beautiful book and for loving how much i love jane eyre. i don’t agree with everything zoltan said here (she is an atheist and i am very much not), but her journey of treating texts as sacred is truly lovely. i’ve very much had this experience with jane eyre myself and am eager to see which other books and movies i can treat as sacred to see which gifts they give me.
February 18, 2021
Made me rethink a classic and come to love it for entirely new reasons
October 13, 2021
The idea is to take your favorite book pick some sentences and phrases out of it and relate to your own life and reflect on why the character feels a certain way and what actions they take. I found it really dreary. Way to ruin your favorite book.
November 27, 2024
I love every single piece of content—from podcasts, to this book—that Vanessa Zoltan puts out. If you’re not listening to Harry Potter and the Sacred Text, or Hot & Bothered, I highly recommend both. In this book, Vanessa (an atheist chaplain) takes us along her journey of treating her favorite book, Jane Eyre, as sacred—and through a range of essays on topics from Love, to Fear, to Betrayal and more—demonstrates how we can engage with any beloved text in a way that is sacred and meaningful. For someone like me who has a complicated past with religion, rediscovering spirituality through the books and movies and content I love, has been truly life changing. I loved this one on audio and will definitely be thinking of how to put these sacred reading practices, into practice in my own life.
September 2, 2021
I was a little hesitant about picking up Praying with Jane Eyre: Reflections on Reading as a Sacred Practice as I really like Vanessa Zoltan but really do not like Jane Eyre. I'm grateful I gave this as try as I can now confidently report that a love, or even a fondness, for Jane Eyre is not necessary to enjoy this book.
Praying with Jane Eyre is a collection of essays / atheist sermons on a variety of topics that use Jane Eyre as the sacred text. Zoltan weaves together her life experiences, her broad theological + philosophical knowledge, and examples from Jane Eyre to "preach" on everything from betrayal to women's rage. The essays often took me to places that I wasn't expecting in ways that really made me think deeply about my perceptions of everyday concepts. I enjoyed all of the essays but have to give a special shoutout to On Commitment and On Staying in Bed, which particularly touched me.
If you are curious about how people can use non-religious books to find deeper meaning and interrogate our perceptions of ourselves, I highly recommend Praying with Jane Eyre. It renewed my belief that any text can teach us lessons if we engage with it over and over. As someone who is pretty anti-religion, Zoltan's teachings have really meant a lot to me and illustrated that these deeper conversations can happen outside of organized religion.
C/W:
Praying with Jane Eyre is a collection of essays / atheist sermons on a variety of topics that use Jane Eyre as the sacred text. Zoltan weaves together her life experiences, her broad theological + philosophical knowledge, and examples from Jane Eyre to "preach" on everything from betrayal to women's rage. The essays often took me to places that I wasn't expecting in ways that really made me think deeply about my perceptions of everyday concepts. I enjoyed all of the essays but have to give a special shoutout to On Commitment and On Staying in Bed, which particularly touched me.
"Commitments are always promises we shout into the unknown."
If you are curious about how people can use non-religious books to find deeper meaning and interrogate our perceptions of ourselves, I highly recommend Praying with Jane Eyre. It renewed my belief that any text can teach us lessons if we engage with it over and over. As someone who is pretty anti-religion, Zoltan's teachings have really meant a lot to me and illustrated that these deeper conversations can happen outside of organized religion.
C/W:
December 26, 2021
This book is part memoir and part personal growth. The author comes to terms with her family legacy and identity through the lens of her favorite novel, Jane Eyre. The book also reveals different techniques we can use when reading any work as a sacred text, which will help all of us find a deeper appreciation for the books we love to read.
This is a collection of essays. Whether we call them sermons or essays, these snippets reflect different texts deeply. But it's also a memoir in essays because of all of the passages that talk about the author's family history with Auschwitz and who survived. The thing that appeared different than other books or articles written on this topic was how the author, generations later, tried so hard to put herself in that situation to understand it.
To listen to my interview with the author, go to my podcast at:
https://zibbyowens.com/transcript/van...
This is a collection of essays. Whether we call them sermons or essays, these snippets reflect different texts deeply. But it's also a memoir in essays because of all of the passages that talk about the author's family history with Auschwitz and who survived. The thing that appeared different than other books or articles written on this topic was how the author, generations later, tried so hard to put herself in that situation to understand it.
To listen to my interview with the author, go to my podcast at:
https://zibbyowens.com/transcript/van...
September 18, 2021
You don’t have to know Jane Eyre to enjoy this book, but it helps (I re-read it simultaneously with reading this). I came to this book after many enjoyable hours of listening to the author’s podcast which uses Harry Potter as a stepping stone for spiritual discussion. This does the same with Jane Eyre, in essentially a series of thought-provoking sermons focusing on different themes in the book. I also loved her chapters on Little Women and Harry Potter, two series I’ve spent countless hours enjoying. There’s also an interesting chapter on the Great Gatsby, which I haven’t revisited since college but nonetheless found thought provoking. Highly recommend!
June 21, 2024
It was nourishing on so many levels….thoughts from outside the echo chamber of my life, insights into finding more insights from our experiences (both lived and read), how to soul-search, how to appreciate others, and how to elevate what might seem mundane and the often “box-checking pursuit of knowledge through reading because that is what the cultured do” experience into being changed and edified. I did a lot of underlining and it highlighted how owning a book (especially one that was gifted) ennobles the journey with markings, holding, and being close to the physical object….this doesn’t happen naturally with audiobooks and is less likely with library books. Great experience overall….recommended from Fireside podcast with Blair Hodges.
September 27, 2022
DNF at 56%
Ever leave your religion but miss the trappings of it afterwards? The social gathering, the accountability, the quiet times? Ever feel unwilling to put your faith in God but still want to feel like a Good Person who is working toward a great purpose with others? Simple, Zoltan argues, you should just pick a new book (or make them rotational) to be your "sacred text" and you (ideally with others alongside) can build your own facade of religion by studying it to inform your life. As long as you treat it with respect and apply rigor and routine in your study and application, you can get the exact same benefits as you would studying a traditional religious text. (This is regardless of the fact that you yourself may identify problematic elements within your readings or troubling information about its author. Just seek to be informed and diligently study even when it doesn't make sense to you what you're meant to benefit from it.) Feel free to invent your own psuedo-religious rituals and incorporate prayer as you feel inspired. Pray to the characters in the novel, or just borrow their dialogue to repeat as a mantra. Whatever moves you.
Zoltan, a graduate of divinity school and an "atheist chaplain" turns first to Jane Eyre as the sacred text to model herself by. Each chapter is a sermon extrapolating from a few quotes within a passage of Jane Eyre, embellished by personal anecdotes, relatable maxims on life, and what she believes can be applied to ones daily living within the work. Even within these sermons, she makes a number of tenuous conclusions and leaps of logic to support her moral takeaways. Early in the book, Jane is quizzed on Hell and what she must do to avoid it. Cheekily, she responds "I must keep in good health and not die." Zoltan waxes at length on surviving as a force unto its own in overthrowing oppression. She heroically claims, " 'I will survive,' said by a person of less power to a person of greater power is a threat to the status quo." This clearly is not what Jane intended in this retort, nor what Bronte had in mind in penning it. Can a reader draw these conclusions after careful study and grow as a person by doing so? Or does the book merely become a vehicle for self-reflection so that the atheist can restate her own ideas dressed up in different words and feel stronger in those beliefs?
Zoltan also makes some concerning comments offhand like the fact that she considers herself to be at her truest self when she's depressed. In a climate-changed world, we all should be so cynical, she reasons, and what's more honest about the world than hopelessness and futility? Her philosophical and spiritual perspective on the world is bleak and this is the best she feels she can conjure to cope with such a reality. What's truly sad to me in reading this entirely depressing book, almost eclipsing the grief I feel for her earnest expression of living lost and broken, is how twisted the liturgy and ritual of church feels in her hands. I've attended church services before where sermons preached held this same humanitarian take on the/a sacred text, pulled only tangential truth from the scripture to prop up a preexisting moral conclusion, gave the speaker an outlet to share personal trials and triumphs and provided the audience with a warm sense of commeraderie in following a common ideal. I balk at the very notion of an "atheist chaplain" (what does that even mean?) but must concede how easy it is for the uncommitted believer to partake in the blessings of fellowship and even exercise the gift of teaching while all the time paying only lip service to the God who vouchsafed such things for his children and the Bible He left for us to understand Him and why He vouchsafed those things in the first place.
Ever leave your religion but miss the trappings of it afterwards? The social gathering, the accountability, the quiet times? Ever feel unwilling to put your faith in God but still want to feel like a Good Person who is working toward a great purpose with others? Simple, Zoltan argues, you should just pick a new book (or make them rotational) to be your "sacred text" and you (ideally with others alongside) can build your own facade of religion by studying it to inform your life. As long as you treat it with respect and apply rigor and routine in your study and application, you can get the exact same benefits as you would studying a traditional religious text. (This is regardless of the fact that you yourself may identify problematic elements within your readings or troubling information about its author. Just seek to be informed and diligently study even when it doesn't make sense to you what you're meant to benefit from it.) Feel free to invent your own psuedo-religious rituals and incorporate prayer as you feel inspired. Pray to the characters in the novel, or just borrow their dialogue to repeat as a mantra. Whatever moves you.
Zoltan, a graduate of divinity school and an "atheist chaplain" turns first to Jane Eyre as the sacred text to model herself by. Each chapter is a sermon extrapolating from a few quotes within a passage of Jane Eyre, embellished by personal anecdotes, relatable maxims on life, and what she believes can be applied to ones daily living within the work. Even within these sermons, she makes a number of tenuous conclusions and leaps of logic to support her moral takeaways. Early in the book, Jane is quizzed on Hell and what she must do to avoid it. Cheekily, she responds "I must keep in good health and not die." Zoltan waxes at length on surviving as a force unto its own in overthrowing oppression. She heroically claims, " 'I will survive,' said by a person of less power to a person of greater power is a threat to the status quo." This clearly is not what Jane intended in this retort, nor what Bronte had in mind in penning it. Can a reader draw these conclusions after careful study and grow as a person by doing so? Or does the book merely become a vehicle for self-reflection so that the atheist can restate her own ideas dressed up in different words and feel stronger in those beliefs?
Zoltan also makes some concerning comments offhand like the fact that she considers herself to be at her truest self when she's depressed. In a climate-changed world, we all should be so cynical, she reasons, and what's more honest about the world than hopelessness and futility? Her philosophical and spiritual perspective on the world is bleak and this is the best she feels she can conjure to cope with such a reality. What's truly sad to me in reading this entirely depressing book, almost eclipsing the grief I feel for her earnest expression of living lost and broken, is how twisted the liturgy and ritual of church feels in her hands. I've attended church services before where sermons preached held this same humanitarian take on the/a sacred text, pulled only tangential truth from the scripture to prop up a preexisting moral conclusion, gave the speaker an outlet to share personal trials and triumphs and provided the audience with a warm sense of commeraderie in following a common ideal. I balk at the very notion of an "atheist chaplain" (what does that even mean?) but must concede how easy it is for the uncommitted believer to partake in the blessings of fellowship and even exercise the gift of teaching while all the time paying only lip service to the God who vouchsafed such things for his children and the Bible He left for us to understand Him and why He vouchsafed those things in the first place.
July 14, 2021
Admittedly, my general indifference towards Jane Eyre as a book probably set this book up for failure with me. The fact that I still enjoyed it is a testament to Vanessa’s storytelling and writing abilities.
August 26, 2021
Reading is a sacred practice, and what a gift our literacy is. Lifting every person up in the world to be able to communicate through written symbols should continue to be a top priority for all governments, organizations and individuals.
But this wonderful book takes it to a whole new level. I’m 56 and I feel like I’ve only now learned to read - REALLY read. The insights, examples, suggestions and invitation to explore the words popping off the page and then churning and pulsing Inside me was revelatory. Reading, always enjoyable, now has entered a whole new chapter of literature’s place in my life.
And it is not all about Jane Eyre.
But this wonderful book takes it to a whole new level. I’m 56 and I feel like I’ve only now learned to read - REALLY read. The insights, examples, suggestions and invitation to explore the words popping off the page and then churning and pulsing Inside me was revelatory. Reading, always enjoyable, now has entered a whole new chapter of literature’s place in my life.
And it is not all about Jane Eyre.
January 16, 2022
This is an interesting subject: seeking spirituality in secular writing. It wasn’t until I reached the epilogue chapter with its “tool kit” of suggested ideas for techniques to try at home that I realized what was going on - sort of.
Zoltan’s pseudo-close-reading analysis of “Jane Eyre” was also revealing for me and sent me back to a rereading of it in order to follow her interpretation - which I thought was perhaps a little overdone with its feminist emphasis. Certainly Rochester was a rotter, but making Bertha into a heroine was something of a stretch. However, I never liked saccharine Jane all that much anyway.
Zoltan’s book, on reflection, seems to me to be another too-personal revelation of the writer’s history and inner struggles that I feel as her reader-psychiatrist I should be the one getting paid and not her. However, on balance, I’m glad I pushed ahead and finished it. Better than some, not as good as others. Bibliophiles unite!
Zoltan’s pseudo-close-reading analysis of “Jane Eyre” was also revealing for me and sent me back to a rereading of it in order to follow her interpretation - which I thought was perhaps a little overdone with its feminist emphasis. Certainly Rochester was a rotter, but making Bertha into a heroine was something of a stretch. However, I never liked saccharine Jane all that much anyway.
Zoltan’s book, on reflection, seems to me to be another too-personal revelation of the writer’s history and inner struggles that I feel as her reader-psychiatrist I should be the one getting paid and not her. However, on balance, I’m glad I pushed ahead and finished it. Better than some, not as good as others. Bibliophiles unite!
August 28, 2021
As a person who isn't religious and has never read Jane Eyre, I was hesitant about picking up this book. But Vanessa Zoltan, while being a trained Chaplin, is also an atheist, and she wasn't trying to teach me about Jane Eyre, but about the sacredness of the texts around me. I finished this book feeling differently about spirituality and sacredness.
Zoltan's sermons pull from Jane Eyre and from her own experiences. From depression to love to intergenerational trauma and the holocaust, she discusses many real topics that we are all thinking about often.
Zoltan's sermons pull from Jane Eyre and from her own experiences. From depression to love to intergenerational trauma and the holocaust, she discusses many real topics that we are all thinking about often.
September 27, 2023
I heard about 30 seconds of an interview with this author on NPR and put it on hold at my library. I would have never picked it up otherwise. I have not read Jane Eyre. Shocking! I'm often interested in the perspectives of atheist Jews though and the idea of looking to books for something deeper spoke to my librarian heart. I related to this book in a lot of different ways and felt deeply nourished by much of it. It gives literature study, self-help, memoir, and feminism. I think it would be a really good read for a book club to help inspire different events and discussions.
June 6, 2024
"Praying with Jane Eyre" is a very interesting book. I got it for my birthday and it turned out to be a great present. Not only does this book reflect on a multitude of plausible interpretations my favourite novel of all time, "Jane Eyre", it also provides great observations on life in general. I feel like this book has taught me very much, and has given me great insights.
September 20, 2021
All I can say...is give me more!
May 22, 2022
Vanessa Zoltan is terrific at teasing out complexity. She fully acknowledges that Jane Eyre is a problematic novel, but also analyzes it from several angles to make us understand how the ordinary becomes sacred. An excellent challenge for anyone from any faith/philosophical bent.
September 3, 2023
I loved everything about this book, even the parts I disagreed with.
July 17, 2021
I feel like I need to read this again. I’m not sure I agree that the author was praying with Jane Eyre, but perhaps that is the English major in me. It’s almost a twist on the “Bible as literature” class I took with the esteemed Prof. Ralph Williams. Lot to unpack here. I enjoyed it.
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September 8, 2021Full review here: https://dearstrangethings.substack.co...
June 14, 2022
I loved reading through this book. I have listened to Vanessa Zoltan's podcasts (Harry Potter and the Sacred Text and The Real Question) and I love the idea of treating almost any book as sacred and being able to learn from them in a deep way. She uses her training as a chaplain (though she is atheist) to walk us through parts of one of her favorite books, Jane Eyre, using the techniques that religious scholars (specifically Judeo Christian) use to study the Torah and Bible. Though she knows and uses techniques used by scholars in other religious traditions, she doesn't feel comfortable teaching them because they are not her background and she is ever conscious of using things appropriately and respectfully, not just co-opting them for her own use. I learned a lot by reading this book and I'm excited to start using these techniques to learn more deeply from the books that I love and return to time and time again.
February 22, 2022
This book, with its intro by Terry Tempest Williams, and its subjects of literature as sacred, written by an atheist who was raised in a religious tradition, nearly leapt off the shelf before the kind bookseller at Cream and Amber books talked it up and ensured I would have it.
I absolutely love Zoltan's premise and approach of reading any text as sacred. Some chapters and most all of her close readings struck deep chords of emotion and recognition in me. Jane Eyre is a favorite of mine, so engaging with it on a rigorous level was a delight.
I dearly wish that in addition to the chapter about Rochester's first wife that she would have had a chapter from Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea about Antoinette, which is how I refer to that character rather than by the name Rochester gave her. (Edited to add: On the podcast Hot and Bothered: On Eyre, there is one episode devoted to the Antoinette character, and one to Wide Sargasso Sea, both of which featured the close, thoughtful empathic readings I admired from the book.
The book faltered for me in a few spots. A chapter on a relative who had hurt Zoltan felt potentially retributive, rather than simply an example. And the chapter on how Rochester might have raped Jane but didn't was troubling. For all Zoltan says that he is a problematic character, her apologetics for him in that chapter felt excessive to me.
I thought the excellent far outweighed the underdeveloped. But how you feel about memoir, Jane Eyre, and Rochester, will likely determine how your mileage will vary.
I absolutely love Zoltan's premise and approach of reading any text as sacred. Some chapters and most all of her close readings struck deep chords of emotion and recognition in me. Jane Eyre is a favorite of mine, so engaging with it on a rigorous level was a delight.
I dearly wish that in addition to the chapter about Rochester's first wife that she would have had a chapter from Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea about Antoinette, which is how I refer to that character rather than by the name Rochester gave her. (Edited to add: On the podcast Hot and Bothered: On Eyre, there is one episode devoted to the Antoinette character, and one to Wide Sargasso Sea, both of which featured the close, thoughtful empathic readings I admired from the book.
The book faltered for me in a few spots. A chapter on a relative who had hurt Zoltan felt potentially retributive, rather than simply an example. And the chapter on how Rochester might have raped Jane but didn't was troubling. For all Zoltan says that he is a problematic character, her apologetics for him in that chapter felt excessive to me.
I thought the excellent far outweighed the underdeveloped. But how you feel about memoir, Jane Eyre, and Rochester, will likely determine how your mileage will vary.
May 22, 2024
This is one of those books that feels like it would have made a great article, or series of articles, but it had to be stretched too hard to make a book. Some of the chapters were more than half full of a retelling of part of Jane Eyre, with only a couple of pages pertaining to the topic.
Another big problem with this is that the author seems to be incapable of being straight forward. She can't define what reading fiction as scripture actually means, but dances around it instead. Finally, the title doesn't reflect the content, because it's not about prayer as most people would define it. That was OK with me, but I prefer to titles to let you know what's actually inside. That said, there were some ideas worth pondering, which I will revisit.
Another big problem with this is that the author seems to be incapable of being straight forward. She can't define what reading fiction as scripture actually means, but dances around it instead. Finally, the title doesn't reflect the content, because it's not about prayer as most people would define it. That was OK with me, but I prefer to titles to let you know what's actually inside. That said, there were some ideas worth pondering, which I will revisit.
January 10, 2022
Pretentious
August 10, 2022
Though I’m not a huge lover of the Brontë sisters’ novels, I was captivated by the concept this title proposed: that non-religious texts could be mined for their own spiritual lessons. On the face of it, this certainly doesn’t seem to be a radical notion unless one is a fundamentalist of any particular sect; still I found this book kind of a mixed argument for this idea. On the one hand, the author’s spiritual analyses of parts of Jane Eyre’s story could be brilliant and thought provoking. While at other times, it felt like she was stretching things to find a way to an explanation of Brontë’s storylines that fit her own personal perspectives as a 21st century female, and somewhat surprisingly, as a self-proclaimed atheist. This was most evident in trying to find a spiritual meaning for why Jane could still marry Rochester after finding out he’d locked his wife in the attic and failed to mention this alarming situation to her as well. Still, there was certainly value for me in exploring such an interesting concept with the author. I can see myself applying some of the traditional spiritual reading practices like Lectio Divina and Sacred Imagination which she describes in the book, as ways of deepening my own fiction reading experiences in the future.
September 7, 2024
I genuinely loved this book. It was so different than other books I've read this year. No need to have read Jane Eyre prior to reading this one. Though I really want to read it now! So many lines that gave me pause and that I wanted to write down and savor. The core of this book is about reading as a sacred practice. That the more time you spend with a text, the more gifts it will give you. She explores this argument and the human experience (love, loss, heartache) mainly through Jane Eyre, but also Little Women, The Great Gatsby, and the final chapters of Deathly Hallows. This is such a tender and reflective book. Absolutely will be a favorite from this year and I can see myself going back to this one.
December 4, 2021
I have enjoyed Vanessa Zoltan's podcast Harry Potter and the Sacred Text, and was curious about this book despite not having read Jane Eyre since I was 12 and remembering virtually none of the plot. While I don't always feel aligned with Vanessa, I do find her thinking pretty unique and I really vibe with the idea of embracing the sacredness in what we love, whatever that may be. I wasn't quite as invested in the Jane Eyre parts of this book (though it was still interesting), but I really liked learning about Vanessa's life in more depth than we'd normally get in a podcast episode. All 4 of her grandparents survived Auschwitz, and the so theology she seeks for herself must account for senseless suffering and not try to make those experiences meaningful.
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