Partly Strong, Partly Broken by Nathaniel Popkin

 

Nathaniel Popkin’s Partly Strong, Partly Broken is a novel about a Jewish congregation, but it is really about the much larger question of what it means to belong to a community when almost everyone in that community disagrees about what it means to belong to a community. Especially to a Jewish community.

At the center is a lesbian rabbi trying to hold together a congregation filled with competing convictions, grievances, friendships, histories, and political commitments. She is pulled in multiple directions, particularly because of her determination that Jewish responsibility extends beyond the boundaries of the Jewish community. Around her, Popkin creates a collection of wonderfully imperfect people whose relationships unfold through Torah study, book discussions, friendships, sexual relationships, family tensions, and tragedy.

Running through the novel is Cain’s question after killing Abel: “Am I my brother’s keeper?” Popkin never supplies an easy answer. Instead, he keeps asking variations of it. What do Jews owe one another? What do they owe their neighbors? What does a congregation owe the larger community? What does Israel mean to American Jews? And what happens when obligations to one group appear to conflict with obligations to another? I remember the question of Cain coming up in Torah Study in my synagogue.  One guy folded his arms across his chest and said, "Who is my neighbor?"  

One of the pleasures of the novel is that these questions emerge from recognizable Jewish lives, not abstractions. Popkin can be very funny. Theo and Celia spend years as friends before finally becoming lovers after Theo asserts himself in public. After a lot of sex inside a vacation house Celia brings him to, Theo is not sure he wants a blow job by the pool. Throughout the book, the rabbi frets about her relationship with her lover--a Palestinian Arab woman who lives in Israel.  And when the rabbi goes to the beach to have a day alone before the high holy days, she drives her Subaru--of course.

The novel ends just as news of the slaughter on October 7 reaches America.  All of the various conflicts remain unresolved as events in Israel threaten to make every existing division within the congregation deeper. Popkin does not resolve anything. We know that these people are going to continue arguing because the questions they are arguing about cannot be settled. 

I read Partly Strong, Partly Broken while traveling through Europe just before the Jewish High Holy Days, and it made the book personal. I found myself thinking about what kind of Jew I am, what I mean when I call myself a believer, and how much I actually want to belong to any religious community.

Popkin has written an engaging novel about American Jewish life, but also something larger: a novel about the difficult difference between having an identity and accepting the obligations that come with it.

And like the best Jewish arguments, it ends without ending.