Philip Graubart Bücher

Exploring the challenges of the COVID years, this collection of personal essays by Rabbi Philip Graubart delves into the lives of individuals facing confinement and seeking redemption. Through poignant narratives, he introduces a diverse cast, including a Palestinian seeking Jewish companionship, a young baker battling illness, and high school students grappling with restrictions. Each story reflects the struggle between limitation and the yearning for freedom, ultimately revealing how grace, effort, and luck can lead to personal growth and wider horizons.

Rabbi Moishe Weinstein of the Hebrew Theological Institute has been accused of a sexual impropriety regarding a student. Rabbi Yael Gold, a friend and former student of Moishe, is reluctantly persuaded by Miriam, the president of the Rabbinical Assembly, the association of Conservative rabbis, to leave her home in Desert Valley, near Las Vegas, and travel to New York immediately to investigate. Yael is unsure why she has been asked to investigate the matter and is told it is because she knows Moishe well. However, she starts to realize that she doesn't know Moishe as well as she thought when more claims of sexual impropriety surface and her investigation uncovers a complex series of events and a tangled web of dark secrets within the Jewish community. As a result, Yael is forced to look at her own life and also face some unwelcome memories from her past.