Seven Blessings
(Ruchama King)
This fictional depiction of Jerusalem's contemporary Orthodox Jewish matchmaking/dating scene conveys broader insights into the emotions, anxieties, and biases that characterize the searches of the unmarried for life partners.
Author Ruchama King is an American who lived for ten years in the Holy City. She was there long enough to effectively capture the longings, aspirations, disappointments, resentments and near despair of at least the female participants in this particular type of rat race, and of the complex motivations and tireless efforts of those who attempt to facilitate their quests. She was also there long enough to paint vivid word pictures of some less tourist-traversed neighborhoods of Jerusalem.
The book concentrates on several transplanted American singles and the equally transplanted married women who have taken on the mission of connecting soul mates (bashertes in this context). The chief protagonist is a near-40 professional woman, painfully aware of her advancing age and non-marital status in a family-oriented society. Still observant in practice, she has begun to question her Orthodox faith as she now begins also to wrestle with her ability to accept a suitor with a highly visible neurological syndrome.
In counterpoint, we have matchmakers seeking to revive their lives, one in the marital relationship and one in a return to serious intellectual endeavor. The book in fact gives us more than a glimpse of the increasingly rich and varied world of voluntary religious education for adult women in Israel.
If there is a weaness, it is the predominant attention to the female emotions which makes Seven Blessings the book equivalent of a chick flick. Nevertheless, while there is poignancy in those studies, there is also humor in the accounts of some of the dates themselves.
Resumos Relacionados
- "1,001 Nights Without Sex:the Curse Of The Single Girl"
- Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus
- Competing Devotions
- Panhandle Dreams
- Until The Real Thing Comes Along
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