The Life and Crimes of Hoodie Rosen - Hardcover

Blum, Isaac

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0593525825 ISBN 13: 9780593525821

Verlag: Philomel Books, 2022

Inhaltsangabe

LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD!
A WILLIAM C. MORRIS AWARD WINNER!

The Chosen meets Adam Silvera in this irreverent and timely story of worlds colliding in friendship, betrayal, and the hatred that divides us.

Hoodie Rosen's life isn't that bad. Sure, his entire Orthodox Jewish community has just picked up and moved to the quiet, mostly non-Jewish town of Tregaron, but Hoodie's world hasn't changed that much. He's got basketball to play, studies to avoid, and a supermarket full of delicious kosher snacks to eat. The people of Tregaron aren’t happy that so many Orthodox Jews are moving in at once, but that’s not Hoodie’s problem.

That is, until he meets and falls for Anna-Marie Diaz-O’Leary—who happens to be the daughter of the obstinate mayor trying to keep Hoodie’s community out of the town. And things only get more complicated when Tregaron is struck by a series of antisemitic crimes that quickly escalate to deadly violence.

As his community turns on him for siding with the enemy, Hoodie finds himself caught between his first love and the only world he’s ever known.

Isaac Blum delivers a wry, witty debut novel about a deeply important and timely subject, in a story of hatred and betrayal—and the friendships we find in the most unexpected places.

Praise for The Life and Crimes of Hoodie Rosen:

“A deeply authentic story about the terror and glory of encountering the outside world without sacrificing who you are—and who you want to be. It’s touching, tragic, and as Jewish as your Bubbe’s cholent.” –Gavriel Savit, New York Times bestselling author of Anna and the Swallow Man

“Blum gives the common but often-dismissed spiritual journey of many teens the respect it deserves in this witty, profound look at cross-cultural friendship, courageous honesty, and how a willingness to truly see and love our neighbors can change an entire community.” –Vesper Stamper, National Book Award-nominated author of What the Night Sings

“A refreshingly human look at the day-to-day nuances of Orthodox Judaism and the terror of modern antisemitism. I laughed, I gasped, I craved kosher Starburst. Two thumbs up from this nice Jewish girl!” –Tyler Feder, Sydney Taylor Award-winning author of Dancing at the Pity Party

“Bold, brave, and brutally honest, it holds a permanent piece of my heart.” –Dahlia Adler, author of Cool for the Summer

"Isaac Blum has the rare talent of telling searing, visceral truths in a witty, funny, punchy way . . . The Life and Crimes of Hoodie Rosen is a vital voice in Jewish YA canon." –Katherine Locke, Sydney Taylor Honor author of The Girl with the Red Balloon

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Isaac Blum (he/him) is a National Book Award-longlisted and Morris Award-winning writer. He’s taught English at several colleges and universities, and at Orthodox Jewish and public schools. He lives with his wife in Philadelphia where he watches sports and reads books that make him laugh while showing him something true about the world. The Life and Crimes of Hoodie Rosen is his debut novel. You can visit Isaac online at isaacblumauthor.com and follow him on Twitter and Instagram @isaacblum_.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

CHAPTER 1
in which I celebrate Tu B’Av by taking the first step toward my own ruination
 
LATER, I TRIED TO EXPLAIN to Rabbi Moritz why it was ironic that my horrible crime was the thing that saved the whole community. He didn’t get it, either because he was too angry, or because his head was filled with other thoughts, or because the man has no sense of humor.
 
I don’t think it’s funny now—it ruined my life, put me in intensive care, and humiliated me and my family on a global scale. But I found it funny at the time.
 
It all started on Tu B’Av, which is one of the more obscure Jewish holidays. I’m Orthodox, but even I couldn’t recall what the holiday was about. I only remembered when I looked out the window and saw the girl in white. She was on the sidewalk across the street.
 
I was in halacha class, learning about Jewish law. We were talking about ritual hand-washing. Rabbi Moritz paced back and forth in front of the whiteboard, reading from the Shulchan Aruch, making the occasional Hebrew or English note on the board.
 
I was a little distracted because Moshe Tzvi Gutman was slurping cereal next to me, and a little distracted because Ephraim Reznikov was reading his copy of the Shulchan Aruch out loud but out of sync with Rabbi Moritz. But I was mostly distracted trying to remember what the heck Tu B’Av was about.

I couldn’t ask my buddy Moshe Tzvi because he would make fun of me for not knowing. Moshe Tzvi studies really hard, and he makes you feel like an ignorant schmuck if you aren’t as learned as he is. So I just stared out the window as though the answer would be out on the street. And then it was.
 
Because now the girl was dancing, making various motions with her hands, swinging her body around in little circles.
 
Which made me remember that Tu B’Av had something to do with dancing girls and the grape harvest—the grape harvest was pretty big back in biblical times. During the grape harvest, all the unmarried girls of Jerusalem went out into the vineyards where the harvest was happening, and they danced, wearing only plain white robes. Because all these girls were wearing plain white robes, the boys didn’t know if the girls were rich or poor, or even which tribe they were from. It created a level playing field, and the boys could choose a wife without thinking about if she was poor, or if she was from some undesirable rival tribe.
 
The girl outside wasn’t wearing a white robe, because it was the twenty-first century. She wore a white T-shirt, its short sleeves revealing skinny arms. The shirt ended just above a pair of shorts that left most of her legs exposed. The legs ended at a pair of white Adidas sneakers, striped blue.
 
She was dancing. But why was she dancing? There was nobody on the sidewalk with her but a small white dog. I thought it was strange behavior, but maybe gentile girls danced for their dogs all the time. I had no idea. I wasn’t supposed to look at gentile girls. I guess there were Jewish girls who dressed that way too, but certainly not any I knew. And if she was a Jewish girl dressed like that, I wasn’t allowed to look at her either.
 
When she stopped dancing, she walked over to the base of a tree, bent down, and picked up a cell phone. Maybe she’d recorded her dance? She stood up, looked over, and made eye contact with me. Or, I thought she did. It was hard to tell from that distance, but when she looked up at me—or at the school—I reflexively looked away, up at the board, at Rabbi Moritz. The contrast between the girl and the rebbe couldn’t have been starker. He wore a heavy black suit and had an enormous beard. And Moritz was spitting as he talked. He had a little bit of saliva on his upper lip.
 
“Why, according to the text,” the rebbe asked, “must we wash our hands upon rising in the morning? Why, before we walk four cubits, must we wash?”
 
Reuven was all over it. “We have left the chance for evil spirits to come onto us in the night. So we wash them off, the spirits.”
 
“Amazing. As Reuven said, we have left ourselves vulnerable,” Moritz went on, his voice rising to “vulnerable,” pausing, then descending, “not only to the spirits of evil, but what else?” His voice rose again, and the question came out in a high-pitched squeak. “What else?”
 
Reuven again: “The spirits have come and, depending on how you read it, our souls have departed, right?”
 
“Correct. Our souls have departed through our hands. Through cleansing, and through the Modeh Ani prayer, our souls return and we are ready for service of HaShem.” Everything Moritz said came back around to servicing God.
 
“What if you wear gloves?” asked Moshe Tzvi. He was still working on his cereal, but he paused to gesticulate with his plastic spoon, spraying little drops of milk across his desk. “You know, while you sleep. Must you still wash?”
 
Rabbi Moritz paused in his pacing. “This is a good question,” he said. “I would say, based on the text, that the gloves would keep your soul in your body. Though of course this would be impractical, sleeping in gloves.”
 
“Okay,” Moshe Tzvi said, scratching his bare chin. “Now what if the gloves have a small hole in them? What are the dimensions of the soul? And how . . . squeezy is it?”
 
“I think the question is not how big the hole is in the gloves, but whether or not the wearer of the gloves is aware of the hole,” said Rabbi Moritz.
 
This is always the question. Judaism has rules for just about everything, from how to slaughter your animals, how to watch television without violating Shabbos (our Sabbath, our day of rest), to when and for how long you have to refrain from eating on fast days (of which there are many). But the trick is that you only have to follow the rules if you know about them. If you’re a Jew, but you don’t know you’re a Jew, you don’t have to follow any of the rules. It’s like if you went to Walmart and stole a bunch of things, and then the police came and they were about to arrest you, and you were like, “Wait, I didn’t know it was illegal to take this stuff without paying,” and the police were like, “Oh, okay, our apologies. Have a good day. Enjoy the free TV.”
 
I had a question for the rebbe, but I was too busy staring out the window, and it slipped away. So too had the girl—she wasn’t there anymore.
 
“What if the hole is pretty big?” Moshe Tzvi asked. “Big enough that you can’t plausibly deny knowing about it? Maybe you turn your hand over so you can’t see the hole, but you can feel that it’s there.”
 
“Then you have to wash.”
 
Rabbi Moritz picked his book back up, and was about to turn the page, but Moshe Tzvi wasn’t satisfied. “What if Hoodie is sleeping in his gloves, and he knows there’s a hole in his glove, but then I bash him over the head with a very heavy piece of pipe, and he forgets about the hole in his glove due to his head trauma?”
 
Rabbi Moritz considered, nodding his head a few times in a slow rhythm. “It would depend on his state of mind upon awakening, after he’s slept. Can we move on?”
 
“No,” said Moshe Tzvi. “We haven’t talked about sleeping in mittens.”
 
“Oy,...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Philomel Books
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2022
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0593525825
• ISBN 13: 9780593525821
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 224
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar