How Odd

You need a reason to think oddly of Jews?

Not mean hate. Not frothing antisemitism. Just that bewildered "what the...?".

Here, for example:

Her fortunes have drastically improved since her mother’s death, her third marriage and her child’s recovery...Shapiro explores various flavors of belief that exist, she says, “on the other side of logic”: “energy work” with a woman who channels spirits by the laying-on of hands; the spirituality of Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, which in her 20s Shapiro attended for years, though she did not really think she was an alcoholic; a form of Judaism that is loving and comforting, unlike what she perceives as the punishing, judgmental Orthodoxy of her youth; the Brahma Viharas, the key virtues of Buddhism (loving kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy and equanimity) — is it possible for any human being to consistently practice them?

So, what went on previously?

Well,

She grew up in a tense Orthodox Jewish household where her parents were deeply divided about religion. Her observant father became addicted to painkillers; her mother resented her faith and seethed with rage, much of it directed at Dani. Shapiro often felt like the black sheep — or, as she puts it, the “blond sheep” — in her own home. She rebelled, drank too much, dropped out of college, became mistress to her best friend’s stepfather, a wealthy married lawyer, in a spectacularly ill-­advised affair. Then a car crash, in which her father was killed and her mother broke 80 bones, altered her life forever.

Her site. I know you're interested.