kaddish.com - a book review
In Nathan Englander’s slim religious parable “kaddish.com” (Knopf, 203 pages, $24.95), a Jewish man named Larry, during a phase of rebellion from his family’s Orthodox faith, pays an online company to find a proxy to recite the prayer of mourning eight times a day for the eleven months stipulated after the death of his father. It’s a handy service, he thinks, like “JDate for the dead.” Then the book flashes forward some two decades to find Larry—now named Shuli—happily returned to the fold, a teacher of the Talmud and an exemplary upholder of Jewish Law. Yet for all his piety he’s guilt-stricken by his youthful act of spiritual outsourcing, and the book follows his journey to Jerusalem to track down the company headquarters in a long-shot attempt to reverse the contract and, as he says, “to finally mend what I’ve torn.”
It’s a wonderfully nimble performance, the author’s best book since his heralded debut, “For the Relief of Unbearable Urges” (1999). Mr. Englander is particularly astute in his exploration of the vital inconveniences that religious observance vouchsafe in a world in which all technological progress conspires to make experience more passive and remote. Is there a future for ancient rituals if an app can take care of them for us? “kaddish.com” smuggles profound moral questions under the dress of its light and diverting story.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/fiction-women-in-the-absence-of-men-11553870600 (paid subscription)
