****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
Absolutely love this book. It shows how shaken up a small, even nice community (and they do pride themselves on being nice) gets shattered and has to come to terms with the greater world outside them, on that world's terms, not theirs. That is, as opposed to going to a non-kosher fancy restaurant for a drink just for a special occasion, they need to deal with one of their own teenagers running away, with drugs, affairs, and other things they earnestly believe "don't happen here." (That is what's said after tragic things happen everywhere, ever notice that?) All the blame for this is HURLED by the community women at Batsheva, a very unorthodox newcomer and a convert to Judaism. Some of the things she does genuinely are inappropriate, her boundaries are very poor - she talks to her adolescent girl students about her first sexual experiences, for instance; not a good idea for any authority figure - and engages in some blatant flirting with the Rabbi's son in public without even knowing him well. Things like that. I personally didn't like her character all that much. Her intent seems to be to bring in lots of new, out-there, at times wacky-seeming things into a very insular community whose traditions and values are sacrosanct to them. You do that, you need to anticipate trouble, and she doesn't seem to get there or really care - until it comes to her getting fired and being told straight-up that she won't belong there and they want her out. Still, to blame her for everything is wrong and misguided, and shows how quickly people, even those who work hard to be generous and welcoming and *good* - RELIGIOUS - will scapegoat and ostracized.One thing I love about this book is that it's mostly written in the community voice - that is, not first-person or third, but the "we," the "us," the "our." And that community is, for the most part, the women there. That, to me, is very interesting. Some reviewers have criticized this narrator/character - the us and its individual members - as being dull, one-dimensional (I don't agree with that), and telling not showing, too much. Well, that's kind of the idea. These are pretty simple people. Their identities are very much those of accessories - to their husbands and children, to to the rituals and traditions of Judaism and the South. They're not contemplating Shakespeare's lesser-known works - they're making challah. And to see how how their mentality changes, shifts, and breaks off into individual pieces over the course of the book, is nothing short of fascinating.
