A “stunning” portrait of life and love inside an insular Jewish community that “reads like an Orthodox Pride and Prejudice . . . Rewardingly delightful” (Bust). London, 2008. Nineteen-year-old Chani Kaufman is betrothed to Baruch Levy, a young man she’s seen only four times before their wedding day. All the cups of cold coffee and small talk with suitors have led up to this moment. But the … up to this moment. But the happiness Chani and Baruch feel is outweighed by their anxiety about the realities of married life; about whether they will be able to have fewer children than Chani’s mother, who has eight daughters; and about the frightening, unspeakable secrets of the wedding night.
Through the story of Chani and Baruch’s unusual courtship, we meet a very different couple: Rabbi Chaim Zilberman and his wife, Rebbetzin Rivka Zilberman. As Chani and Baruch prepare to share a lifetime, Chaim and Rivka struggle to keep their marriage alive—and all four, together with the rest of the community, face difficult decisions about the place of faith and family in the contemporary world.
Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and selected as an Amazon Best Book of the Month, The Marrying of Chani Kaufman is a “deeply melodic and exciting” story that “will resonate with readers from all backgrounds” and “linger after the last page” (Publishers Weekly).
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I really enjoyed this book, and it’s glimpse into what it is like to be part of an ultra-Orthodox community. The novel is written from several points of view — Chani, the bride-to-be; her husband to be Baruch; Rivka the conflicted wife of a rabbi and her son Avromi among others. It is the story of how women within the community marry and some of the responsibilities of community members, as well as the conflict some feel when face to face with the secular world. Many of the other reviewers point to negatives about the book, such as errors in the Yiddish or a subtle bias in the writing, but I did not really sense that. The simple life of these communities made sense, and many live without luxuries. I found it to be an intriguing portrait that left me seeking more.
A fascinating and exciting book. It exposed me to the figures of a community whose external appearance is different but whose internal expressions are identical. It is precisely the fact that this is a very closed community that attracted me, and the inner world of the characters, as the writer wrote in depth, that left me hooked until its end.