Joy Comes in the Morning, by Jonathan Rosen

A few months ago, Rabbi Stahl handed me a book. He was excited about the book, and wanted me to read it-he even gave it to me before he shared it with his wife, Lynn. Sam was enthused about the book Joy Comes in the Morning, as it was the first real novel about a Reform woman rabbi. Penned by a noted author, it had received significant accolades throughout the Jewish and literary community.

Not only was I flattered that Sam was so eager for me to read it, I was curious. I had a number of questions as I opened the novel. How would this woman be depicted? What kind of rabbi would author Jonathan Rosen create? What would be her trials and tribulations? Her successes? Her fears? Her joys? Would I resonate with her?

As different as Rabbi Deborah Green and I are, I was amazed at how much we had in common: struggles with femininity and the rabbinate; clothing woes, authority, a need for prayer and a desire for deep faith-- Deborah and I handled them differently, but Jonathan Rosen was adept at truly creating a three dimensional character that I felt could be real. I could relate to Deborah as a colleague-I laughed out loud and raised my eyebrows at certain points in the book, thrilled that Rosen was able to get onto paper the life and thoughts of a contemporary rabbi.

Intrigued, I dug further into the novel. I found myself sucked into the many lives that the author painted, swept away by this story of love and faith. I came away enriched, intrigued. It has been a long time since a novel had so touched home, and I couldn't wait for more.

Our two protagonists, Rabbi Deborah Green and Lev Friedman, are brought together when Lev's father Henry has a stroke in the midst of trying to commit suicide. Lev, while open to the spiritual moments in his life, is taken aback when he rushes into his father's hospital room and encounters Deborah, or at this point to him, Rabbi Green, praying. He coldly dismisses her, uncomfortable with her presence.

Surprisingly, Lev finds himself drawn to Deborah. Feeling badly after his rudeness to her, he finds her later and apologizes. Continuing to pursue her, they begin a relationship, and through her, Lev begins to openly explore his faith, and his Jewish observance. For example, as his relationship with Deborah develops, he also turns to her for lesson in Judaism. She assigns him the prayer “Modeh Ani”, the prayer we are to say upon waking, thanking God for restoring our bodies and souls. His reflections in the book on this prayer show his developing relationship with his faith:

“He wondered about the word restored. Did that mean that your soul isn't in your body when you sleep but that it is given back to you-restored-when you wake up? Or just that your soul is refreshed in the morning, fluffed up like a pillow? And what was the soul? . . . the prayer, took its existence for granted, which was part of the prayer's appeal. Despite the fact that he wrote about science, and believed wholeheartedly in evolution, Lev had never felt that chemical explanations were sufficient to describe his experience of being alive. He had a category, an unnamed sensation in his being that attached itself to the world soul. . . It would be wrong to say that the prayer transformed Lev, but it opened a little channel to a feeling he had always had without addressing directly. When Jacob's wife-Lev's sister in law, Penny-was pregnant, she told Lev that she could not walk down the street without thinking about how every person had once been a fetus inside a mothers womb and that experience changed her life. Lev felt something similar in the morning thinking that everyone he passed had a soul . . . Thinking this simple thought, that they all had souls, made Lev feel drunk, queasy, uncomfortable, excited, and accountably calm.

Jonathan Rosen, wisely, does not assume that Deborah's faith is static and sturdy, but rather offer us a window to her spiritual struggle. For example, for Deborah, hospital visits are a major part of her life. In fact, she divides her time between visiting patients-Jewish and non-Jewish alike--- and her congregation. Deborah's faith is tried by Mrs. Fink. Mrs. Fink is completely at peace with her lung disease and impending death, for she firmly believes that when she dies, she will meet her husband, and they will be united. However, her faith is shattered, when, her heart stopping, she “dies” and is resuscitated. During this experience she does not meet her husband. Her entire belief system, built in the many years since her husbands death, is gone, and with it-everything. Shirley and Deborah have a painful conversation:

“Shirley,said Deborah softly, “ what happened?”

For a few moments more the old woman lay mute. Then she mouthed a word that Deborah could not quite make out. She leaned close and the old woman moved her lips again.

“Nothing!” Shirley hissed, air leaking from her throat and giving the word a ghastly overtone. . . .”

“I expected to find him”, Shirley whispered, and Deborah knew she did not mean God, but Seymour Fink, her husband of forty-seven years, whose presence she had felt so consistently and powerfully since his death.

Mrs. Fink's loss shatters Deborah. She attempts to comfort Mrs. Fink, but the hollowness of her words scare her: “Deborah felt it as a change in herself, as if she too, had lost something precious. Her own pilot light had blown out and she smelled nothing but gas. She literally found it difficult to breathe”

Beginnng with this experience, Deborah's faith is seriously challenged. Eventually, she flees to visit her sister, Rachel, and her partner Dawn, to safe, hidden space. It is her sister's partner, and her sister's acceptance ,that help her to claw her way back. Dawn attempts to tell her a story that Deborah's sister had told her, a story of God, to comfort her. Dawn struggles with the story, apologizing. However, the story that Dawn tried to give her was actually a story that Deborah had told Rachel, years ago. She had felt that Rachel had rejected the story, and was surprised to find that she had not, but had passed it on, as Rosen wrote, “ But Deborah felt deeply stirred. Not by the story, but by the fact that her sister had cared enough about that story to pass it on to Dawn.” Deborah returned to New York, and to Lev. She described herself to Lev as sinking, becoming invisible, of becoming nothing. With Lev's reassurance, and her sister's unwitting flattery, Deborahs faith returns.

However, the tenor of Deborah's faith has changed; it seems slightly more fagile. She needs her observance more, as if to tangibly hold on to the faith she has pasted back together. In fact, Lev, angry when Deborah fled to her sister, contemplated eating non-kosher meat on her favorite dishes. He doesn't go through with it, but when he admits it, Deborah panics: “. . . Deborah raced into the kitchen and flung open the cabinets as if she expected to find evil doings inside. She was staring at her grandmothers' blue ceramic dishes when he joined her. . . . .

“Bubba's dishes are safe”, said Lev.

“Somehow, I need them more than ever”, said Deborah.

Fundamentally, to understand this novel, we need only look at the title of the book, Joy Comes in the Morning. It is a phrase from Psalm 30, which reads in part: “A Psalm; a Song at the Dedication of the House; of David. I will extol You, O Lord, for You have raised me up, and have not suffered mine enemies to rejoice over me. O the Lord my God, I cried unto You, and You healed me; O the Lord, You brought up my soul from the nether-world; You kept me alive, that I should not go down to the pit. Sing praise unto the Lord, O you Godly ones, and give thanks to God's holy name. For God's anger is but for a moment, God's favor is for a life-time; weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes in the morning.”

These words underline the personal relationship with God that the Psalmist enjoys-the connection that Deborah and Lev, and other characters in the book, seek, through relationships with each other, through learning, through ritual.

The Psalmist affirms that his relationship with God is fundamentally personal, and fundamentally secure. He asserts that there are times where we may weep for the night-or longer-but joy does, for him, come in the morning, as God returns to him. An optimistic Psalm, for sure. But, ultimately, this Psalm does describe the spiritual journey that the two main characters endeavor with integrity and zeal. With each other, Deborah and Lev's find the joy of God in each other, and in their deepened spirituality.

This book has been given mostly favorable reviews. In particular, The New York Times wrote: “What a pleasure it is to see such a serious and yet playful novel in this hot-button time for religion….Not since E.L. Doctorow's City of God have we seen such a literary effort to plumb the nature of belief - in Jewish-American culture, in Talmudic study, in prayer, in sex, in the very soundness of one's own mind.” This novel appeals to everyone who struggles with faith through the ridiculous and sacred moments that pepper our lives. There are comical highlights, tearful and tragic moments, as well as a few surprise twists. Andrew Furman, from the Miami Herald wrote, “In shimmering prose and with uncommon empathy, Rosen creates a cast of characters plagued by profound spiritual crises.... Not since Saul Bellow has an American novelist created characters so unabashedly determined to unleash their souls, to burst their spirit's sleep."

This brief sermon can only scratch the surface of the potential areas for introspection and discussion. I urge you to read it to find the themes in the book that speak to you; I hope that it touches you as it did me.

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