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Danya Ruttenberg reads from her novel Surprised by God: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Religion. At thirteen, Ruttenberg (editor of Yentl's Revenge: The Next Wave of Jewish Feminism), decided that she was an atheist. As a young adult, Danya immersed herself in the rhinestone-bedazzled wonderland of late-1990s San Francisco: attending Halloweens on the Castro, drinking smuggled absinthe with wealthy geeks, and plotting the revolution with feminist zinemakers. But she found herself yearning for something she would eventually call God.

Surprised by God is a religious coming of age story, from the mosh pit to the Mission District and beyond. It is the memoir of a young woman who found, lost, and found again communities of like-minded seekers, all the while taking a winding, semi-reluctant path through traditional Jewish practice that eventually took her to the rabbinate. It is a post-dotcom, third-wave, punk-rock story of the political implications of integrating life on the edge of the 21st century into the discipline of traditional Judaism without sacrificing either.