The Rabbi

Twentieth-century America. Michael Kind grows up in a Jewish household in New York and chooses the rabbinate as a way to reconcile inherited religious ethics with the pressures of modern life. After training as a Reform rabbi, he serves a succession of communities—from small congregations in the Ozarks to the American South, California, Pennsylvania and New England—where each appointment tests his ideals against local prejudice, institutional politics and the private needs of his congregants.

Michael’s marriage to Leslie, the daughter of a Protestant minister who converts to Judaism, becomes both the emotional centre of his life and a continuing source of tension within the communities he serves. Their relationship, children and changing ambitions unfold alongside debates over assimilation, tradition, race and religious authority. The novel presents a family chronicle and a portrait of American Judaism through a minister whose public certainty repeatedly conflicts with personal doubt.