52 pages • 1-hour read
The Life and Crimes of Hoodie Rosen
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 1-3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of religious discrimination.
Reflecting on recent events, Yehuda “Hoodie” Rosen believes that the crime he committed actually saved his whole community. Although he now recognizes the severity of the situation, he admits that, in that moment, he found it very funny.
The trouble begins on Tu B’Av, a minor Jewish holiday that is often compared to Valentine’s Day. As he sits in yeshiva, listening to Rabbi Moritz discuss ritual handwashing, Hoodie tries to remember the history of Tu B’Av. He is distracted by a girl dressed all in white dancing in front of a tree across the street. The sight of the girl reminds him that Tu B’Av celebrates an ancient tradition in which unmarried girls in Jerusalem would dress in white robes and dance through the vineyards during the grape harvest. Their simple white robes would disguise their class and tribe, and the boys working the harvest could choose a wife without prejudice. As Hoodie watches the girl dance, he guesses by her clothing and behavior that she is a gentile (non-Jewish) girl and that he is not allowed to talk to her.
Unable to focus on Rabbi Moritz’s discussion of the importance of ritual handwashing, Hoodie leaves the yeshiva and begins to search the nearby streets for the girl dressed in white. When he finds her walking a small dog, he is almost too nervous to speak, knowing that yeshiva students aren’t allowed to talk to girls. Hoodie is so drawn to the girl that he wonders if God is pulling them together, but feels too shy to speak to her. The girl compliments Hoodie’s prized hat but seems not to understand its significance. Hoodie asks about her dog, and the girl says he is named Borneo, after the island. Hoodie pretends to have heard of Borneo. The girl introduces herself as Anna-Marie Diaz-something, and although Hoodie doesn’t hear the second part of her last name, he knows instantly that she is not Jewish. She tries to shake his hand, but as a bar mitzvah (a Jewish male who’s reached the age of 13—the age of religious responsibility), he is not allowed to touch a woman to whom he is not married. When Anna-Marie sees his old-fashioned flip phone, she laughs and makes fun of it. Hoodie is not insulted, and imagines spending more time with her teasing him.
Moments after Anna-Marie leaves, Rabbi Moritz appears to check on Hoodie. Hoodie asks Rabbit Moritz if he’s heard of Borneo, and Rabbi Moritz says no. Hoodie knows he is too distracted to learn anything for the rest of the day.
Chapter 2 Summary
Hoodie introduces himself and his family as “grossly exaggerated Orthodox stereotypes” (14-15). He describes himself as thin and average height, with dark curly hair—the only boy in his large family. Because his family is Orthodox and not Chasidic, he and his father choose to keep their sideburns short and not wear peyot (side curls). Like most Orthodox boys, Hoodie attends a school that teaches Judaic studies (such as the study of the Torah and Talmud) and general studies (such as history and math). He is in school from early in the morning until six at night.
On his way home, Hoodie stops at the construction site where his father now works. His family recently moved to the town of Tregaron along with several other Orthodox Jewish families after their old town, Colwyn, became too expensive. Since moving to Tregaron, the community has built a new synagogue and a new school. Hoodie’s father works for a development company that is trying to build new apartments in town for other Orthodox families wanting to move from Colwyn to Tregaron.
Hoodie’s father reveals that the local government has ordered construction on the building to stop, and attributes it to antisemitism. Since the arrival of the Orthodox community, the non-Jewish citizens of Tregaron have loudly and publicly protested their very existence. The day before construction of the new apartments was set to begin, the mayor, Monica Diaz-O’Leary, called an emergency town council meeting and rezoned the lot for commercial use. Hoodie’s father suggests that the Orthodox community will have to join the city government in order to advocate for change.
On his way home, Hoodie walks through the Tregaron cemetery and is relieved to see Jewish last names on the headstones. When he arrives home, his oldest sister Zippy is studying at the kitchen table. She criticizes him for his lack of effort at school, explaining that one of the rabbis emailed the family about his poor performance in math and Gemara (the analysis of the Talmud). Hoodie wishes he could switch places with Zippy: As the only boy in the family, he carries the weight of all his parents’ expectations and feels unable to meet them. Zippy encourages him to focus on his Talmud studies and ignore math. Their conversation is interrupted by the sounds of a younger sister crying. Hoodie leaves to comfort her.
Chapter 3 Summary
The next day at school, Hoodie’s best friend Moshe intentionally provokes Rabbi Moritz in a conversation about medieval commentaries on the Torah. Hoodie is impressed by his friend’s ability to spar with Rabbi Moritz but is distracted by the events of the morning.
After spending the night thinking about Anna-Marie, Hoodie’s walk to school is interrupted when he finds her crying in the cemetery he cuts through each morning. He notices her bare arms and legs, which violate the modesty rules of his community. Hoodie walks by Anna-Marie without speaking, but she recognizes him and calls him by name. She explains that she is visiting the grave of her father. Hoodie reads the name “O’Leary” on the grave and realizes that Anna-Marie is the daughter of Mayor Monica Diaz-O’Leary, the politician desperate to block the Orthodox community from Tregaron.
As Hoodie and Anna-Marie leave the cemetery, they find two Jewish headstones defaced with swastikas and a message warning the Jewish community to leave. Although he has heard about antisemitism throughout his life, Hoodie has never faced it personally and does not know how to respond. He and Anna-Marie walk away in awkward silence. When they arrive at her house, half a block away from his school, Hoodie sees an anti-Orthodox sign in her yard. Anna-Marie asks for Hoodie’s phone number, and he gives it to her reluctantly.
Hoodie prepares to tell Rabbi Moritz about the defaced grave but decides not to when Anna-Marie texts offering to help him clean it herself. As they work, Anna-Marie touches Hoodie’s arm briefly, thrilling and terrifying him. Anna-Marie explains that the people of Tregaron are anxious about cultural changes in their community. Hoodie admits to himself that the Orthodox community does want to change the town but doesn’t see why that is a bad thing.
Hoodie returns to school in time for afternoon prayers but is intercepted by Rabbi Moritz, who reveals that he followed Hoodie to the cemetery. Hoodie explains that he was cleaning the graves with Anna-Marie. Rabbi Moritz is more upset about the fact that Hoodie was with a gentile girl than he is about the graffiti. Rabbi Moritz tells Hoodie that centuries of antisemitism suggest that the outside world will never accept them and that the only way to overcome antisemitism is to focus on the Torah. Although most yeshiva students are allowed to leave school for self-reflective walks, Rabbi Moritz revokes this privilege for Hoodie, insisting he cannot leave without a chaperone.
Chapters 1-3 Analysis
The introductory chapters of The Life and Crimes of Hoodie Rosen establish the central conflict of the novel: the tensions between the new Orthodox Jewish residents of Tregaron and their gentile neighbors. Blum introduces this conflict through the discovery of the defaced Jewish graves, the novel’s inciting incident, which sets the action of the story in motion. Hoodie’s decision to clean the graves with Anna-Marie and hide evidence of the crime has long-lasting effects for Hoodie and his community.
The opening chapters introduce Blum’s use of a literary device known as an argument. Arguments are brief summaries appended to the beginnings of chapters of long works. They have been used since the Renaissance to help orient readers in complex texts, and often begin with the traditional phrase “in which.” In The Life and Crimes of Hoodie Rosen, these arguments offer a brief, often editorialized, preview of the chapter so the reader knows what to expect. The argument for Chapter 1, for example, reads “in which I celebrate Tu B’Av by taking the first step toward my own ruination” (1). This argument previews the chapter’s discussion of Tu B’Av and Hoodie’s first encounter with Anna-Marie. However, the reference to “ruination” also foreshadows the trouble to come as a result of their friendship.
Blum’s use of arguments emphasizes his thematic exploration of The Importance of Argumentation and Debate in Jewish Culture. It also reflects an emphasis on analytical thinking and argumentation within the yeshiva community. The arguments evoke Hoodie’s experience reading rabbinical commentaries and arguing with Rabbi Moritz, providing the reader with guideposts through his first-person narrative. Blum’s structural choice to append arguments to the beginning of his chapters demonstrates the importance of critical thinking and tradition to Hoodie’s worldview and personality.
At the start of Hoodie’s character arc, Blum depicts him as fully engaged in his Orthodox Jewish community, never questioning the rules and expectations that guide his life. However, the novel itself offers subtle criticisms of the yeshiva school system. Hoodie’s yeshiva operates on a “double day” system in which Hoodie and his classmates study the Torah in the morning and traditional subjects like history and math in the afternoon. Even though the yeshiva teaches traditional subjects, the novel suggests that the primary concern is the study of the Torah, highlighting the novel’s thematic interest in The Role of Community in Maintaining Faith. Hoodie’s sister dismisses his concerns about failing math, telling him that “nobody cares if you can do math” (25). However, she insists that he cannot fail Gemara (the study of commentaries on Jewish law), explaining that “a Jewish boy has to know Talmud” (23). These passages highlight Blum’s perspective on the priorities of Hoodie’s yeshiva—and the Orthodox Jewish community at large—valuing the study of religious texts over the traditional subjects taught at non-religious schools. The fact that neither Hoodie nor his teacher Rabbi Moritz have heard of Borneo—the Southeast Asian island for which Anna-Marie’s dog is named—also suggests a lack of knowledge of the world outside of their community. These subtle criticisms of the yeshiva system reflect the growing debate within the Jewish community about the balance of sacred and secular education in Jewish schools.
Blum uses Hoodie’s home life to highlight the value placed on large families in Orthodox Jewish communities and explore the positives and negatives of a large family dynamic. Because their parents both work to support their family, Hoodie’s oldest sister Zippy acts as a substitute parent for her younger siblings. Although she is only in her “late teens,” Zippy “[takes] care of [the] kinds of things” her parents cannot, such as “fielding the school emails and phone calls” from the Rabbis about Hoodie’s performance in school (22). Zippy is also responsible for getting her siblings to school in the morning: She kicks at Hoodie’s door because “she always has too many items and/or sisters in her arms to knock with her hand” (30). These passages reflect the scope of Zippy’s responsibility within her family.
Unlock all 52 pages of this Study Guide
Get in-depth, chapter-by-chapter summaries and analysis from our literary experts.
- Grasp challenging concepts with clear, comprehensive explanations
- Revisit key plot points and ideas without rereading the book
- Share impressive insights in classes and book clubs