Joy Comes in the Morning: A Novel [Paperback]

Jonathan Rosen (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 14, 2005

Deborah Green is a woman of passionate contradictions--a rabbi who craves goodness and surety while wrestling with her own desires and with the sorrow and pain she sees around her. 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. Deborah’s encounter with Henry and his family draws her into a world of tragedy, frailty, love, and, finally, hope.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Rarely has the life of a rabbi been examined with as much complexity—and sympathy—as in this second novel by the author of Eve's Apple. Deborah Green is by all accounts a highly capable young woman, adored by her Manhattan congregants, adept at both weddings and funerals. But she can't shake her concern that all good rabbis are, as one of her teachers describes, just "the smoothest fakers around." In her role as a hospital chaplain, she encounters Henry Friedman, a Holocaust survivor who has suffered a stroke and whose diminished abilities have driven him to attempt suicide. This leads her in turn to Henry's son Lev, a science writer—and religious skeptic—who recently fled from his wedding to a non-Jew. Lev feels overshadowed by his ultra-competent brother, Jacob, and by his friend Neal Marcus, whose energetic mind has been derailed by schizophrenia. Lev's developing relationship with Deborah jump-starts his religious practice, but he struggles with the daily life of having a rabbi girlfriend. Deborah, whose secular family has always questioned her choice of occupation, is beset by lingering questions of legitimacy and professional duty. Rosen, a frequent contributor to the New York Times and the New Yorker and author of the popular nonfiction book The Talmud and the Internet, writes with uncommon assurance about contemporary Judaism, whether the subject is Friedman family dynamics or the insecurities, comedies and small pleasures of everyday rabbinic life. Above all, this is a welcoming and intelligent look at Deborah's efforts to weld her many identities—woman, rabbi, Jew—into a cohesive whole.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From The New Yorker

In her work as a hospital volunteer, Deborah Green, a Manhattan rabbi, encounters an ailing Holocaust survivor—recovering from a debilitating stroke and a suicide attempt—and his skeptical son. To complicate matters, she is beautiful and single, while the skeptical son is a shy bachelor; the romance causes crises of faith for both, as they negotiate their divergent attitudes toward their religion. As the story moves from wedding to funeral and back again, and Deborah officiates at the momentous changes in other people's lives, she increasingly finds her own life empty of the things that she has always counselled her congregation to treasure. Served with the merest teaspoon of schmaltz, Rosen's touching novel of Jewish manners thoughtfully addresses the question of whether piety can teach us faith.
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: Picador (July 14, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312424272
• ISBN-13: 978-0312424275
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #188,453 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #37 in Books > Literature & Fiction > United States > Jewish American

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "Weeping May Endure For A Night..." Psalm 30, February 11, 2005

By 

Jon Linden (Warren, N.J. United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Joy Comes in the Morning: A Novel (Hardcover)

The first thing that the reader notes is the book is impossible to put down. Mr. Rosen builds a special rapport with the reader that makes his story compelling. The reader is left each time the book is put down, with the irresistible urge to find out what will happen next.

Rosen tells a wonderful and realistic tale of a Reform Woman Rabbi in Manhattan. The book describes her relationship to the Jewish faith, from a Reform Perspective. This perspective is a difficult one, as the concept of Reform Judaism has at its core, the same beliefs as all Judaism, but tempered by a modern interpretation of the scriptures that lends itself more easily to the combination of civil and religious life in the vast Materialistic and Capitalistic and Cacophonous reality of modern society.

Yet Deborah, the lady Rabbi who is the protagonist of Rosen's story, does not in any way lack spiritualism or connection to her faith. She has a great and mighty dedication to her beliefs. And she does her utmost to convey that feeling to her congregants and to all that she may meet. Some would say, that she made some very rash decisions and took some very unorthodox actions within Rosen's story. But this is for the reader to evaluate in the privacy of the mind.

One thing is clearly true. The book shows the stark contrast and the interesting co-existence of human Joy and human Sadness, as they live within us, all the time, yet most of the time, they balance within us to make us a whole person. When that balance is no longer within our control, we lose our ability to moderate that and we also lose our ability to operate in regular day to day society.

Rosen is acutely wonderful at illustrating this dichotomy in his book. For all who have struggled with the concepts of the different forms of Judaism, this book offers a new perspective; a perspective that puts the power of decision and free choice back into the individual's mind and heart, and not into anyone else's.

The book is highly recommended for all with any interest whatsoever in theology and the concept of God. Regardless of one's religion, one can related to the stark, yet gentle realism of Rosen's work.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Rosen captures universal quest for understanding in face of sorrow, February 3, 2006

By 

Bruce J. Wasser (Lake Bluff, IL) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Joy Comes in the Morning: A Novel (Paperback)

Jonathan Rosen derives the title and theme of his inspiring novel from the Book of Psalms. It is the promise of hope after despair that animates his elegant "Joy Comes in the Morning." Each of Rosen's characters is suffused with pain: the pain of Holocaust memories, the pain of thwarted dreams, the pain of an unfulfilled life. Each major character wrestles with loss of faith and a dwindling belief in life's possibilities. And, true to the counsel offered in Psalm 30, each struggles to realize that however daunting and long a night's pain can be, a new day dawns with promise.

"Joy Comes in the Morning" adheres to a conventional plot and does not break any new ground stylistically. Its towering strength is how its characters grapple with the timeless problems of existential anguish, search for meaning and rediscovery of purpose. Rosen confidently imbues the three crucial characters of his novel with a universality that binds them to us. Henry Friedman, victimized by a debilitating and humiliating stroke, assiduously plans his own suicide. His skeptical son, Lev, lacks focus and confidence in the wake of a failed relationship and the mental breakdown of his best friend. Both men find comfort in rabbi Deborah Green, whose strength and compassion belie her own crumbling faith.

The interplay between Henry, Lev and Deborah becomes the leaven through which Rosen probes questions of faith, family and love. Each character's humanity includes faults, and Rosen's willingness to permit the three to struggle, without roadmaps or guarantees, is one of the best aspects of his writing. Before his abortive attempt to end his life, Henry, whose wife describes him as a "wounded, loving, mercurial man," writes a final letter to his son. In this deeply moving letter, Henry enjoins his son to "submit" to "things larger than ourselves." These "obligations sustain us," Henry writes, but he is unclear as to what these duties are. Lev, "shy, empathic and self-conscious," sets out to discover what his father's cryptic command entails.

Lev's quest takes him to Deborah, whom he meets as she comforts the comatose Henry in a hospital room. Both Lev and Deborah are recovering from failed relationships; each slowly, irreversibly is beginning to redefine the place of religion and spirituality in their respective lives. It is no accident that they are drawn to each other, despite their glaring surface differences. As a rabbi, Deborah is a risk-taker; her earthy sensuality symbolizes her humanity just as her emotionally-liberating, free-flowing tears counterbalance her astonishing capacity for rational study and intellectual rigor. Ironically, doubts and uncertainties provide the mortar for a lasting relationship between the two.

Although Jonathan Rosen's novel features Jewish characters, it is universally appealing. "Joy Comes in the Morning" captures the fears many of us experience in times of crisis and the terror we may feel when traditional faith-based solutions disappear. It is existential loneliness, the realization that we must come up with our own solutions to bind up emotional wounds, that drives the novel. With sensitivity, humor and faith, Rosen offers us a compelling answer.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Joy Comes in the Reading, April 20, 2005

By 

S. Gluskin (Philadelphia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Joy Comes in the Morning: A Novel (Hardcover)

This is a wonderful page-turner. The reader is privy to the inner thoughts of a woman rabbi. She struggles in her religious and personal lives especially facing the difficulty of being authentic to herself while having to perform for a congregation.

We also get very real depictions of end-of-life issues, aging parents, mental illness, all while being held together with a plot that propels the book forward briskly.

Rosen has succeeded in describing and developing the inner life of each one of his characters.

Note that there is much specific reference to Jewish liturgy in the novel as two of the characters significantly struggle with its meaning and power. Though I am familliar with Jewish liturgy and was refreshed with this kind of commentary-in-a-novel, my hunch is that people not familliar with Jewish liturgy will also find it compelling because it isn't forced. The spiritual struggles the characters are facing are real and their reference to and dialog with the liturgy is authentic given who they are.

I couldn't put it down.