Kaaterskill Falls

In the summer of 1976, Orthodox Jewish families from Washington Heights, a Manhattan neighborhood, migrate to Kaaterskill Falls, a small town in the Catskill Mountains of upstate New York. Among them are followers of Rav Elijah Kirshner, the revered rabbi who brought his community from Frankfurt, Germany, to America in 1938, just before Kristallnacht, the Nazi pogrom against Jews. Every Friday, Isaac Shulman, a small and devout man, drives north with Andras Melish, a 57-year-old Hungarian-born toy importer who is skeptical of religion but defers to his observant wife, Nina. Isaac's wife, Elizabeth Shulman, an English-born mother of five daughters, is curious, athletic, and restless. She reads Milton and Tolstoy and has given each daughter a secret English name reflecting her romantic aspirations.

The novel introduces the community through Sabbath rhythms and summer gatherings. The 78-year-old Rav commands reverence at the synagogue. His firstborn son, Jeremy Kirshner, about 40, is a Renaissance scholar at Queens College and an ordained rabbi who never married; he has the learning to succeed his father but chose an academic career. Jeremy's younger brother, Isaiah, has devoted his life to assisting the Rav, while Isaiah's wife, Rachel, the only child of the famous Rabbi Guttman, manages the Rav's medication for Parkinson's disease, a condition kept secret from the community. The Rav confides to Jeremy that Isaiah "is not an artful person. He is not a subtle person," revealing private disdain for his loyal son. Jeremy's mother, Sarah, had reshaped the curriculum at the yeshiva, the community's religious school, to include secular subjects, grooming Jeremy for succession. When Sarah died, Jeremy was 25; he withdrew from the family and refused to marry. The education meant to prepare him for leadership instead set him free.

Andras's marriage to Nina is strained by emotional distance; he defers on trivial matters while withholding genuine engagement. Their 15-year-old daughter, Renée Melish, befriends Stephanie Fawess, a bold Syrian-Christian girl and self-declared feminist who pushes the cautious Renée toward independence. Meanwhile, Andras discovers Una Darmstadt-Cooper, a tiny elderly recluse living in a cabin in the woods, a nature photographer who challenges his toy business as a "false religion" that shields children from death.

Elizabeth's desire for something of her own crystallizes during a visit to Olana, the estate of the 19th-century painter Frederick Church, where she stands before Thomas Cole's painting of Kaaterskill Falls and feels a fierce urge to create. The desire takes practical form: She wants to open a kosher grocery store so families will not have to rush on Friday afternoons. Isaac objects on grounds of money, risk, and the need for the Rav's permission. Elizabeth knows she cannot approach the Rav alone, because the Rav does not receive women on business matters.

On Tisha b'Av, the fast day mourning Jerusalem's destruction, the Rav delivers a powerful speech and collapses. At the hospital, he asks to see Jeremy, shocking Isaiah, and speaks warmly about his late wife and her belief in beauty, a rare vulnerability that brings Jeremy to tears. Renée quits her camp counselor position and takes a job on the Kendall Falls Library bookmobile. Stephanie pressures Renée to use her access to expose discrimination at a local gated community, but Renée resists.

In the fall, the Rav returns to public life, flanked by both sons at Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. Isaac, wrestling with his conscience during the High Holidays, the major autumn holy days, admits his objections to the store stem partly from self-conscious pride. One Friday night, singing the traditional "Ashes Chayil," a song praising the virtuous wife who "considers a field and buys it," he recognizes Elizabeth and resolves to support her. He and Elizabeth visit the Rav's office, where the Rav dictates a formal letter of permission. As they leave, the Rav tells Isaac, "I remember your father," a small but meaningful acknowledgment. That same autumn, Andras discovers Una dead in her cabin. Sitting in his car afterward, he confronts a lifelong avoidance of death: He has never visited the places where his family perished. The word "Please" escapes him, almost a prayer.

Through the winter, the Rav draws Jeremy closer while pushing Isaiah away, suspending their private study sessions and barring Isaiah from handling correspondence. Rachel fumes that the Rav is using Jeremy as a weapon against her husband.

Elizabeth's store opens in Kaaterskill in the summer of 1977 and thrives. Operating out of the back room of Hamilton's store on Main Street, she stocks kosher food brought weekly from the city. Business booms as families flock to be near the ailing Rav. Elizabeth begins expanding beyond her permission, importing food from Brooklyn bakeries not sanctioned by the Kirshner community. Isaac warns she is "playing with the Rav's permission," but she presses on. Jeremy arrives late for a Sabbath dinner at his father's house, and the Rav does not speak to him for the rest of the weekend, deepening a destructive cycle of provocation and withdrawal.

In August, the Rav dies. At the memorial service, Rav Isaiah delivers a speech about the community as a fortress, declaring that "only consistency will sustain us." Elizabeth hears these words as rigid and exclusionary, recognizing she has scaled the community's walls and lowered herself to the other side. Isaiah summons Elizabeth, confronts her about importing food under other rabbinical certifications, and revokes her permission. He orders her to close immediately. Back at the store, she pulls the framed letter off the wall; it drops and the glass shatters.

Elizabeth learns she is pregnant, due in March. The Fawess family vanishes overnight from Kaaterskill, and without her bold friend, Renée begins to notice the unhappiness in her parents' marriage. The Rav's will leaves the houses to Isaiah but bequeaths the entire personal library to Jeremy. Jeremy refuses to donate the books to the yeshiva and suggests selling them, devastating Isaiah and Rachel.

Eva, Andras's older sister, returns from the hospital with cancer and tells Andras he must stop clinging to his dead and learn to love Nina. At a gathering, Andras tells Elizabeth she should try again with a business: "Elizabeth, this is the United States of America. You can do whatever you damn well please." She bursts out laughing; no one has ever spoken to her as if she could act without permission. Elizabeth gives birth to a sixth daughter, Chaya, and secretly records the English name Celia on the birth certificate.

Isaiah and Rachel sell a lakefront property to raise money for the books, but Jeremy refuses the payment: "I was, I never meant it." Alone in his apartment, he discovers that nearly half the volumes bear his mother Sarah's signature. He recognizes that his parents looked in opposite directions: his father toward transmitting the exact letter of the law, his mother toward European literature and the Enlightenment. Without explanation, Jeremy sends every volume back to Isaiah. Isaiah and Rachel stand watching the boxes flow down the delivery ramp, unable to speak.

Elizabeth takes a job at Grimaldi's, an Italian grocery in Washington Heights, remembering Andras's words. On a long June Sabbath in Kaaterskill, Andras walks through his garden, eats a tart strawberry, and feels what Eva meant about savoring life. He watches Nina sleeping and silently forgives her for being well, for remembering without pain, for living apart from him in her own time. The community gathers on a lawn, waiting for the three stars that mark the end of Sabbath. Inside the house, Isaac says the havdalah prayer, which marks the division of the holy from the ordinary week. The guests debate the best translation: the sacred from the secular, the transcendent moment from the workaday world. They walk home under the canopy of trees.