New York - The Novel

young, her father had rented his surgery under the stoop. Wanting to secure good tenants during the Depression, the landlord had soon offered her parents the two floors above, with three months rent-free. It was an excellent accommodation and they’d lived there ever since.
    When she arrived, her mother met her at the door.
    “Michael’s ready, and your father and Nathan will be down in a moment. Rachel was coming tomorrow, but she says they all have colds.”
    Sarah wasn’t too dismayed about her sister. Rachel was two years older. She’d married at eighteen and couldn’t understand why Sarah hadn’t wanted to do the same. Sarah went to kiss her brother Michael. He was eighteen now, and getting to be rather handsome. Then she went up and knocked at Nathan’s door. His room was just the same as ever, the walls covered with photographs of baseball heroes and Dodgers’ pennants. Nathan was fourteen and a good student, who studied hard at yeshiva. But the Dodgers were still the biggest thing in his life. “I’m ready, I’m ready,” he cried. He hated people coming into his room. Then she felt her father’s hand on her shoulder.
    Dr. Daniel Adler was short and round. His head was nearly bald on top, and he wore a small, dark mustache. If he regretted that he was a dentist and not a concert pianist, his comfort lay in his family and his religion. He loved them both—indeed, for him, they were one and the same.Sarah was always grateful for that. It was why on Friday afternoons, whenever she conveniently could, she came home to Flatbush for Shabbat.
    They gathered in the living room. The two candles were ready. While the family stood quietly, Sarah’s mother lit them, and then, with her hands covering her eyes, she recited the blessing.
    “Baruch atah Adonai, Eloheinu melech ha-olam …
”
    It was the duty of the mother to perform this
mitzvah
. Only then, to complete the
mitzvah
, did she uncover her eyes and look at the light.
    Sarah appreciated the ritual, the whole idea of Shabbat: God’s gift of a day of rest to His chosen people. The family gathering at sundown, the sense of intimate joy—she might not be a very religious person herself, but she loved coming home for it.
    After the lighting of the candles, they walked in the dusk to the synagogue.
    Sarah liked her family’s religion. People who didn’t understand these things sometimes imagined that the nearly million Jews in Brooklyn all worshipped the same way. Nothing could be further from the case, of course. Over in the Brownsville area, which was overwhelmingly Jewish, and where the streets were pretty rough, people were mostly secular. Plenty of Jews there never went to services at all. In Borough Park, there were a lot of Zionists. Williamsburg was very Orthodox, and in the last few years a number of Hasidim from Hungary had arrived there, and in Crown Heights. With their old-fashioned dress and their rigorous adherence to Jewish laws, the Hasidim really lived in a world apart.
    Coming mostly from Germany and Eastern Europe, the Jews of Brooklyn had been Ashkenazim at the start. But in the twenties, a large group of Syrian Jews had moved into Bensonhurst. That Sephardic community was completely unlike the others.
    As for Flatbush, it varied. There were Orthodox, Conservative and Reform Jews all living on the same street. A few of the Hungarian Hasidim had come into the area too. Everybody seemed to get along, though, so long as you supported the Dodgers.
    The Adlers were Conservative. “To be Orthodox is good, if that’s what you want,” her father would say to his family. “But for me, it’s too much. Yeshiva is good, but so is other education. So, I am Conservative, but not Orthodox.”
    A few doors down the street was a family who went to a Reform temple.Daniel Adler fixed their teeth, and Sarah had played with their children as a little girl. But even then, she understood there was a difference. “The Reform Jews go too far the other way,” her father had explained. “They say the Torah is not divine, and they question everything. They call this being enlightened and liberal. But if you keep going down that road, then one day you have nothing left.”
    Most of Sarah’s friends in the city were Liberal, or secular. They were her company during the week. Then she’d come home for the weekend. So far, she liked living in two worlds.
    After the brief Friday service, they all walked back. At home, they gathered round the table,