Book Review: A Seat at the Table: A Novel of Forbidden Choices

Joshua Halberstam explains the genesis of this novel in his Acknowledgments: “Rummaging in the closet of my childhood home in Boro Park, I came upon a box filled with typewritten Chassidic stories. These were the tales my father wrote and read on the Yiddish radio station WEVD back in the 1950s and 1960s.” Savoring the insights in these tales, Halberstam set them into a novel about Chassidic families in Boro Park.

Elisha, the seventeen-year-old son and grandson of Chassidic rebbes, longs to learn about the world outside of their community. When he declares his intention to enroll in City College, while promising to keep up with his yeshiva studies, his family is doubtful. Soon Elisha himself realizes that his attempt to live in two worlds—secular and religious—inevitably involves choices.

Set in 1968—at the height of the Vietnamese war and campus rebellions—this novel depicts the inner struggle of a young man who is deeply attached to his family, history, and religion, and at the same time committed to his search for self. Elisha is thrilled on occasions when his two worlds converge—as when he discovers that Franz Kafka was interested in Chassidism and had visited his rabbinic grandfather several times in Prague. But more often Elisha finds that he is changing in ways that separate him from the Chassidic community, putting him on a direct collision course with his father. Steering clear of sentimentality and with a keen eye for humor, Halberstam tells a quintessential story of youth intent on finding its own way, while the parental generation learns how to guide while letting go—in this case, through the wisdom of Chassidic tales.

Bonny V. Fetterman is the literary editor of Reform Judaism magazine.