Larry's beloved father has just died. During the period of shiva, spent at his devout sister Dina's house, Larry is pressured to agree to the duty of an observant son and commit to saying the prayer of mourning every day for eleven months with a minyan of ten other Jews. A rather louche advertising exec, Larry finds a loophole in a website that offers to take on the duty for him to assure his father's status in the afterlife.
Twenty years later Larry is Reb Shuli, happily living a devout life in Brooklyn with his wife Miri and two children. Through an encounter with a young student, grieving the loss of his own father, Shuli comes to realize what he has lost in forsaking his commitment to his father. Frantically, he travels to Jerusalem to find a way to regain what he gave up twenty years earlier.
A sweet and amusing look at what it means to be observant, and what we owe ourselves and those we love, I enjoyed this while missing the heft and gorgeous craft of Englander's earlier What We Talk about When We Talk about Anne Frank and Dinner at the Center of the Earth.
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