Chassidic Fever

A young couple with small children goes to Safed, a city in the north of Israel.They are part of a Chassidic group known as Breslev who seek to restore the dilapidated area of the old city. They become involved with the many newly religious Jews and converts to Judaism who had gravitated to the city, most of who have difficulty fitting in with the myriad of traditional Jewish lifestyles and philosophies. This problem of belonging which they encounter is the crux of the novel. Most of what has been written concerning the newcomers to Judaism has been written by rabbis and has been of a religious nature. Here we see a different picture. You may see people in synagogues, yeshivas, and Orthodox neighborhoods who appear no different than others in their surroundings, but they are different. They are a composite of their former secular selves and their new Orthodox religious personalities. They have changed but they are still a product of their total lives.