Rebecca Goldstein - 36 Arguments for the Existence of God

I wish to shout out my gratitude to both the Guggenheim Foundation and the Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, for supporting the writing of this novel. Among the wonderful fellows at the Radcliffe Institute during the year of my residence was Megan Marshall, who was one of the first of my readers. I thank her for her comments and her friendship.

Gabriel Love was another early reader who provided me with essential feedback. Elaine Pfefferblit’s comments were, as always, illuminating.

I am grateful to the following people for being, I’d wager, the only ones in the world who would not respond “huh?” when sent my bizarre questions but answered them with precision and playfulness: Douglas Hofstadter, Martin Seligman, and, pivotally, Doron Zeilberger.

Readers may be surprised to learn that I did not make up the Kabbalistic musings on such Jewish delicacies as potato kugel, but learned of them from the article “Holy Kugel: The Sanctification of Ashkenazic Ethnic Foods in Hasidism,” by Allan Nadler, reprinted in Food & Judaism , edited by Leonard Greenspoon, Creighton University Press, 2005.

It is a gift for me to be able to avail myself of the wealth of smarts, from the most practical to the most literary, that Tina Bennett provides. Stephanie Koven has been wonderful in her efforts on behalf of this book. I thank the stars to have been able to place my work in the hands of Dan Frank, an editor with whom I have long dreamed of working.

The gratitude and love that I owe my partner, Steve Pinker, are too deep and too many for the telling. Suffice it to say that, among all the profusion of his talents, is his perfect knowledge of love.

I selfishly raised my two daughters, Yael Goldstein Love and Danielle Blau, to be astute critics, and they have never let me down. Each has become a consummate artist in her own right. This book is dedicated to Danielle, who helped me, through all the years, not to lose Azarya. It is often her voice and her purity of vision that I hear and see in him.

Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, a novelist and philosopher, was awarded a MacArthur “Genius” prize for her ability to “dramatize the concerns of philosophy without sacrificing the demands of imaginative storytelling.” Her first novel was the critically acclaimed best seller The Mind-Body Problem . She has received numerous prizes for her five other works of fiction, including National Jewish Book Awards for Strange Attractors and Mazel and the Whiting Writers’ Award for The Dark Sister . Her two most recent books are Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Gödel and Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity , winner of the Koret Prize. She has been awarded two honorary doctorates, Guggenheim and Radcliffe fellowships, and is a Humanist Laureate and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She lives in Boston and Truro, Massachusetts.