The Genealogy of Understanding
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9781590211809
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by Daniel M. Jaffe
Is ancient Torah relevant to the social issues of today? In The Genealogy of Understanding, Matt Klein, a contemporary Jewish Scheherazade, questions whether Torah can illuminate and guide responses to religious conflict and prejudice, to such issues as intermarriage, infidelity, and prejudice that threaten to splinter families in the suburban New Jersey community of his upbringing. He first examines the private lives of his congregation's unfaithful rabbi, of a friend contemplating intermarriage, of a neighbor family that lost wife and mother to AIDS, of other friends raising a brain-damaged child who murders a toddler. Matt then confronts his own family's tensions, particularly his parents' dramatically conflicting approaches to religious observance, his father's struggle with his mother's Alzheimer's decline, and his own coming out as a gay Jewish man despite family and community resistance. Each of the fifty-three stories in this novel responds to a particular weekly Torah reading, resulting in a work of fiction that explores Jewish spirituality, ethics, and community values, as well as the nature of human heart, mind, and soul.
Dan's short story collection, Jewish Gentle and Other Stories of Gay-Jewish Living was published by Lethe Press in 2011, and received rave reviews, especially from the Jewish Book Council. Dan's first novel, The Limits of Pleasure, was a Finalist for one of ForeWord Magazine's Book of the Year Awards. His fiction has been taught in several colleges/university courses. He resides in California.
Paperback, 326 pages
Is ancient Torah relevant to the social issues of today? In The Genealogy of Understanding, Matt Klein, a contemporary Jewish Scheherazade, questions whether Torah can illuminate and guide responses to religious conflict and prejudice, to such issues as intermarriage, infidelity, and prejudice that threaten to splinter families in the suburban New Jersey community of his upbringing. He first examines the private lives of his congregation's unfaithful rabbi, of a friend contemplating intermarriage, of a neighbor family that lost wife and mother to AIDS, of other friends raising a brain-damaged child who murders a toddler. Matt then confronts his own family's tensions, particularly his parents' dramatically conflicting approaches to religious observance, his father's struggle with his mother's Alzheimer's decline, and his own coming out as a gay Jewish man despite family and community resistance. Each of the fifty-three stories in this novel responds to a particular weekly Torah reading, resulting in a work of fiction that explores Jewish spirituality, ethics, and community values, as well as the nature of human heart, mind, and soul.
Dan's short story collection, Jewish Gentle and Other Stories of Gay-Jewish Living was published by Lethe Press in 2011, and received rave reviews, especially from the Jewish Book Council. Dan's first novel, The Limits of Pleasure, was a Finalist for one of ForeWord Magazine's Book of the Year Awards. His fiction has been taught in several colleges/university courses. He resides in California.
Paperback, 326 pages
"Jaffee is a marvelous storyteller and, while a few of the pieces are a bit stilted, many are magnificently evocative and touching. The characters are sensitively drawn and come to life in his hands. This is a lovely piece of fiction suggesting that the challenges, conflicts and conundrums of our lives are expressed in the universal themes of Torah, and our search for solutions begins there, as well." - Amy Scheinerman for Congregational Libraries Today
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"We know the territory that Jaffe writes in-lush, stark, unexpected, a Jordan flowing through it with Real on one bank and Dream on the other. Jaffe is not afraid to write about violence, or blasphemy, sometimes comically and sometimes horrifically....you are holding in your hands this new book of his. Where fractured novel and story collection are Velcroed to the music he composes, his Torah of the moment, the stories of our gay queer Jewish lives, seen and reseen, heard and reheard, with a lush orchestra of lived experience playing in the background. A collection of stories that could be a novel, the sections of a novel shuffled like a deck of cards. A lush Jewish gamelan for queer ears, queer hearts, queer minds. And otherwise."-- from Andrew Ramer's Introduction In Jewish Gentle and Other Stories of Gay-Jewish Living, Daniel M. Jaffe explores various aspects of gay-Jewish life: coming out to self and family; (re)defining one's relationship to tradition and faith; surviving child abuse and teenage sexual identity angst; experiencing the adult joys and heartbreaks of dating, of forming relationships, and of losing them; coping with HIV/AIDS; considering parenting; and dealing with old age. Mirroring the diversity within contemporary American Jewish life, the main characters in these twenty-four stories are Jewish, but in various ways-some wrestle with religion, others with their place in tradition and community. Yet for other characters here, Jewish identity is not at issue in the pursuit of happiness, love, and inner peace; rather, Jewishness is a cornerstone given, a foundational lens through which these characters see and examine the world and self. Paperback, 248 pages |
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