Joy comes in the morning

by Jonathan Rosen

"Deborah Green is a woman of passionate contradictions - a rabbi who craves goodness and surety while wrestling with her own doubts and desires. She has vowed not to emulate those rabbis "who lie around the synagogue like neutered housecats," and has grown restless performing weddings while she remains single. Her life changes when she visits the hospital room of Henry Friedman, an older man who has attempted suicide. His parents were murdered in the Holocaust when he was a child, and all his life he's struggled with difficult questions: Can happiness really come after such loss, or does the very wish profane the dead? Can religious promises ever bring peace?" "At the hospital Deborah encounters Henry's son Lev, a science reporter whose life has taken a turn for the worse since he abandoned his fiancee at the altar. Deborah is drawn to his skeptical intensity, and Lev finds Deborah's blend of piety and irreverence unexpectedly appealing. It is a love triangle with God as the third, mad