Join Bright Star Church and Anshe Emet Synagogue’s book club for a discussion on Goyhood by Reuven Fenton. This conversation will take place at Anshe Emet Synagogue in the Bennett Library at 2PM.
If you have any questions, you can reach out to Emma Sternberg at esternberg@ansheemet.org, or to Jennifer Tescher at jentescher@gmail.com.
About the book:
A book club darling, Goyhood is a brilliant debut about a devoutly Orthodox Jewish man who discovers in middle age that he’s not, in fact, Jewish, and embarks on a remarkable road trip to come to grips with his fate; it’s Chaim Potok’s The Chosen meets Planes,Trains and Automobiles.
When Mayer (née Marty) Belkin fled small-town Georgia for Brooklyn nearly thirty years ago, he thought he’d left his wasted youth behind. Now he’s a Talmud scholar married into one of the greatest rabbinical families in the world – a dirt-poor country boy reinvented in the image of God.
But his mother’s untimely death brings a shocking revelation: Mayer and his ne’er-do-well twin brother David aren’t, in fact, Jewish. Traumatized and spiritually bereft, Mayer’s only recourse is to convert to Judaism. But the earliest date he can get is a week from now. What are two estranged brothers to do in the interim?
So begins the Belkins’ Rumspringa through America’s Deep South with Mom’s ashes in tow, plus two tagalongs: an insightful Instagram influencer named Charlayne Valentine and Popeye, a one-eyed dog. As the crew gets tangled up in a series of increasingly surreal adventures, Mayer grapples with a God who betrayed him and an emotionally withdrawn wife in Brooklyn who has yet to learn her husband is a counterfeit Jew.
