Donald H. Harrison

I once had a rabbi who inveighed against religious hypocrisy with this saying: “Big beard, small Jew.”

What Rabbi Aaron Gold, z’l, meant was that some people are tempted to display how scrupulously they stick to ritual, but are unbending and uncaring when it comes to the more important rules of Judaism, as found in the Ten Commandments, such as not to murder, commit adultery, steal, bear false witness, nor to covet your neighbor’s possessions.

Another important rule is to welcome the stranger, and therein lies the essence of the conflict that powers Naomi Ragen’s latest novel, An Unorthodox Match, is which a formerly secular Jew, who is trying to follow an observant life style, is rejected by the very same people who purportedly want her to follow their ways.

The animosity between Iran on one hand and allies Israel and the United States on the other comes to a suspenseful showdown in this debut novel by Alan N. Levy, a self-described “iconoclastic conservative” and former automobile service director now living in retirement in Florida.