BELOVED COMRADES

Three generations of Jews clash in their search for fulfillment in this novel in stories from Taub, author of Prodigal Children in the House of G-d (2018).

When Arnold Kestenberg, the entrepreneurial founder of Kestenberg’s Car Service, can’t find a seat at his yeshiva student–dominated synagogue, he decides to start his own. After all, how hard can it be? And so Congregation Haverim Ahuvim is born, the Orthodox synagogue with a twist: It has no rabbi. As Arnold explains to his co-founders: “We will lead each other.…We will care for each other. This will be a synagogue of comrades, in the spirit of brotherhood and sisterhood.” The congregation is a success—sort of—creating a multigenerational community of people whose lives and families intersect over the decades. Their individual struggles represent the constant tension between tradition and modernity at play in Haverim Ahuvim—and in Judaism itself. There is Yehudah Ariel, the principal of the Torah and Midot Academy, the closest thing to a spiritual authority the synagogue possesses and a man still figuring life out. There is the boy—and later man—Yehoshua Weissman, who is forced to keep his sexual orientation secret from the congregation, though many people already know it. There is Yehuda’s daughter Braynah, an artist who decides to hold a retrospective of her work in the synagogue—and whose art becomes a method of preserving the past. Taub’s measured prose adeptly captures the personalities and worldviews of his characters: “Mame never used any of the cleansers and creams from the department or specialty stores for her face, either. There too, it was just plain soap. Not dish soap, of course, but hand and body soap. Mame’s face had been a testament to the wisdom of her practice.” The book is slower and less zany than it initially appears to be, and the lack of serious drama in the lives of several characters who temporarily receive the spotlight can make for dull moments. The author succeeds in immersing the reader in this very particular, very Jewish world, however, which seems to have been his goal. Those who are interested in the daily rhythms of such a community will not be disappointed.

A sometimes-charming, sometimes-tedious Winesburg, Ohio–style look at the life of a synagogue.