The Life and Crimes of Hoodie Rosen

“Yeshiva students aren’t allowed to talk to girls, let alone girls dressed like this one. I didn’t really want to talk to her. It was more like I had to. I was drawn toward her, as though pulled by some kind of sci-fi tractor beam.”

The strict cultural expectations guiding relationships between men and women in the Orthodox Jewish community prohibit yeshiva students like Hoodie from spending one-on-one time with women and girls, especially non-Jewish women like Anna-Marie. Despite his understanding of these restrictions, Hoodie feels drawn to Anna-Marie as if by a supernatural force, highlighting his growing independence and sexual awakening—two key components of a traditional coming-of-age arc. He later decides that God brought him and Anna-Marie together for a specific reason.

“Ever since we opened the yeshiva, and my father’s company bought the theater, the locals had been trying to stop us from moving here. They talked about us like we were an invading army, like we were going to ride in on horseback with torches and pitchforks, to set their buildings on fire and slaughter them kosher-style.”

This passage reflects the intense antisemitic sentiment the Orthodox Jewish community faces in Tregaron, highlighting The Dangers of Antisemitic Rhetoric. Here, Blum positions the violence of this rhetoric as ironic, given the fact that the Jewish community is the victims of violence in Tregaron, rather than its perpetrators.

“Don’t bother with the math. You’re a Jewish boy. Nobody cares if you can do math. Let’s focus on the Gemara. A Jewish boy has to know Talmud.”

Both at home and at school, Blum highlights the emphasis placed on religious study in Hoodie’s life. Although Hoodie’s yeshiva spends half of the day focusing on traditional subjects such as history and math, this passage suggests that everyone knows the emphasis is on the study of the Torah and related texts. The narrow focus of yeshiva study is an important theme in the novel.

“I didn’t want my interaction with Anna-Marie to be ruined by this. But it was too late for that. We walked in silence. The silence was uncomfortable. It wrapped around us like a kind of fog. It was constricting. Both of us wanted to split up, but neither of us wanted to be the one to go our own way.”

This passage reflects the vast cultural differences between Anna-Marie and Hoodie, and the influence of those differences on their relationship. Blum uses a simile to describe the antisemitism of the community in Tregaron as a fog-like presence that clouds their ability to see each other clearly. Despite this discomfort, they are drawn to each other and want to spend time together.

“You believe that if you open yourself up to the outside world, they will accept you. But they won’t. We know. We have centuries of evidence. We’ve seen it over and over. That’s why we have to have our own schools, our own businesses. It’s the only way.”

Throughout the novel, both Jewish and non-Jewish communities debate the benefits of cultural exchange and integration. In this passage, Rabbi Moritz warns Hoodie that the people of Tregaron will not accept the Orthodox community, and that the only way to avoid antisemitism is to focus on the Torah and relationships in his community, highlighting The Role of Community in Maintaining Faith as a central theme in the novel.

“We could show them, show them what happens when they spread their hate, show them what their blind bigotry has done. With this, we’d have leverage. With this, we could have scared them into changing the law. With this, we could be building by next week.”

As the novel progresses, the vandalized gravestones represent a key escalation in Tregaron’s growing antisemitism. The various reactions to this defaced gravestone evidence how both Jewish and non-Jewish characters attempt to control the media narrative surrounding it. Here, Hoodie’s father argues that cleaning the graffiti prevents the Orthodox community from using the event to pressure the citizens of Tregaron into reversing their ban on new construction.

“The dancing gave me a whole bunch of uncomfortable and unsanctioned thoughts. I knew I shouldn’t watch the video again. I knew my dad was right about the sickness you could find on the internet. A good Jewish boy wouldn’t watch a video like that. But then why was my hand opening the screen? Why was I reloading the page, pressing the play button again on the video?”

After Hoodie discovers Anna-Marie’s TikTok page and watches videos of her dancing in her bedroom, he starts to think of her as his girlfriend, rather than just his first friend, who is a girl, highlighting the level of difference in their cultural understanding of romantic relationships. The use of the word “sickness” in this passage suggests that Hoodie feels guilty about the emotional and sexual feelings the videos arouse in him.

“Like, you’re already wearing a lot of clothes, and then people just keep draping jackets and coats, and more jackets and coats over you, until you can barely stand, and you’re doubled over under all that material. And then they tell you to stand up straighter, that it’s disrespectful to bend, so you try to stand up straighter, but you just can’t, because the stuff is too heavy.”

In this passage, Hoodie compares the rules and restrictions of Orthodox Judaism to a series of jackets being draped on him by the community—a motif Blum returns to throughout the novel. In this metaphor, Hoodie frames his struggles to stand tall under the weight of these expectations not as a personal failing, but as a reflection of the fact that the expectations are unreasonable. Hoodie’s friend Moshe immediately rejects this argument, suggesting that what Hoodie sees as burdens are actually privileges given by God.

“When Zippy and I got old enough to watch the little girls, my mom went back to work. […] She spent most of her home time in her office nook in the bedroom. At this point, she was like a bat who only emerged from her cave on Fridays, when she and Zippy prepared the house for the Sabbath.”

This passage reflects the novel’s subtle criticism of gender roles in Orthodox Jewish communities. Hoodie’s sister Zippy is responsible for taking care of her younger siblings from a young age. Blum suggests she struggles to balance this responsibility with her own ambitions and career. The fact that Zippy and her mother are responsible for the family’s Shabbos celebrations also hints at the restrictive nature of gender roles within their family.

“Here in Tregaron, we sat on folding chairs—there were real chairs on order, supposedly. Before we leased it, the building had been a pool supply store—there were pool noodles on the floor the first time we prayed. The ceiling was low, the room cramped. I couldn’t feel God in there.”

Blum centers Hoodie’s character arc on his struggle with his personal faith—a struggle catalyzed in part by his move to Tregaron. Hoodie asserts that because the Orthodox community does not have a permanent home in Tregaron, he finds it difficult to connect emotionally with religious services, adding an extra layer of importance to the community’s efforts to build a new synagogue.

“Whatever that thing was, it connected us, to God, but also to the rest of our people, the people we’d prayed with at the synagogue, our people back in Colwyn, our people in Israel, and all of the Jews who’d looked into the candlelight on their Shabbos tables over the centuries.”

The Shabbos dinner—a sacred ritual in Orthodox Jewish communities—connects Hoodie with the larger Jewish community through shared history and ritual. Even with their conflict over his secret meeting with Anna-Marie, Hoodie feels moved by his father’s singing on Shabbos. Crucially, however, Hoodie’s thoughts turn quickly back to Anna-Marie, signaling the central tension between his attraction to her and his Jewish faith.

“I expected her mom’s entrance to be accompanied by some ominous music, like a movie villain. But there wasn’t any music, and she didn’t appear villainous. She was dressed more or less the same as her daughter, except her sweats weren’t as colorful.”

This passage reflects Hoodie’s lack of experience with antisemitism and the troubles his community faces in Tregaron. Given his father’s description of Mayor Diaz-O’Leary, he assumes that she will be obviously villainous in some way and feels surprised to see that she is similar to her daughter. Hoodie’s recognition that antisemitism exists everywhere—even in people he views as “normal”—is essential to his character growth.

“She talks about how hard it is for her, how working harder helps her heal. If she fights for the town, the town he grew up in, she can feel like she’s protecting his memory. But that’s all she can think about. It’s taken over her whole life.”

As the primary villain of the novel, Mayor Diaz-O’Leary is responsible for leading the campaign against the Orthodox Jewish community and sowing doubt about the attacks in the community. In this passage, Blum nuances her portrayal by revealing her grief over the death of her husband and positioning her desire to prevent change in Tregaron as a manifestation of that grief.

“He violates God’s commandments, and he does it with that shiksa. It is sinister, like he has chosen just the most painful, humiliating way to rub his sin in all of our faces. And on this of all days, while his people are under attack, where is he? Where is the son of Mr. Rosen?”

In this passage, a member of the Orthodox community angrily refers to Anna-Marie as a “shiksa,” a derogatory term used to describe non-Jewish women. The use of this term alongside the words “painful” and “humiliating” emphasizes the gravity of Hoodie’s actions within his community. The fact that the speaker refers to Hoodie as the son of Mr. Rosen indicates that his actions have consequences for his whole family.

“Monica Diaz-O’Leary didn’t mention the attack at all. They’d just beaten up Moshe Tzvi and torn up Chaim’s kippah, and she was telling us to “respect” the community?”

After antisemitic teenagers beat up Hoodie’s friends, the community gathers in a place they view as safe—the Kosher grocery store. Their meeting is dispersed by police for violating fire codes, leading to a confrontation that makes the news. In this passage, Hoodie highlights the hypocrisy of Mayor Diaz-O’Leary’s decision to publicly criticize the Orthodox community, rather than their attackers.

“Yehuda, you have committed a chet and a pesha. You have sinned against HaShem, for which you must do teshuvah and repent.”

This passage reflects author Blum’s tendency to intersperse Hebrew words throughout the novel without offering a translation. This stylistic choice signals that Blum’s intended audience is Jewish readers, who would be familiar with the terms and not need a translation.

“My dad had hoped that it would cause the town’s lawyers to back down, because it would look bad to support people who’d committed a hate crime. […] Diaz-O’Leary wondered out loud—on local TV, in the newspapers—whether the ‘victims’ could have staged the attack themselves for political gain, to make the town appear to have biases it did not.”

Hoodie’s father’s reactions to the media coverage of the attack on Hoodie’s friends highlight his desire to use any tool available to protect his community from antisemitic discrimination. He believes that news of the attacks will lead to support for the Orthodox community and a reversal of the ban on construction. In contrast, Mayor Diaz-O’Leary’s public position perpetuates dangerous antisemitic rhetoric that frames Hoodie’s friends as calculating perpetrators rather than victims of a hate crime.

“If you take that last step, you can still have a great life. But it won’t be this one. You have to understand that. It won’t be the one you’ve spent your first fifteen years building toward. It’ll be a different life entirely. Who knows? It could be better. But it’s final. Once you take that step, you can’t turn back.”

The experience of being in cherem offers a preview of Hoodie’s potential future without community support, emphasizing the novel’s thematic engagement with the role of community in maintaining faith. Hoodie’s sister Zippy is the only person in his life who acknowledges that it is possible to live a fulfilling life outside of the Orthodox community. However, she warns that violating the rules of the community would mean full exile from the world he knows.

“I felt like I was starting to understand a little of what Moshe Tzvi was always yammering on about. When you could actually understand it, reading Talmud was like talking to very old rabbis. It was like talking to Rabbi Taub, if he were a thousand years older.”

Hoodie’s arc sees him grow from an academic slacker with little interest in studying Jewish sacred texts to an engaged and curious student of the Talmud on a quest to discover his personal beliefs. His experience of cherem and his relationship with Anna-Marie push him to reconsider his studies in a new light. This passage reflects the importance of community in that journey, as Hoodie compares studying Talmud to talking to respected members of his community.

“‘Go back to Babylon, dude.’ Now she was laughing for real. Laughing at me. I wished I wasn’t standing in the middle of the room. ‘Go back to wandering the desert. Go invent the wheel. You can move things around with very little friction. It’s cool. You’ll see.’”

In this passage, Anna-Marie responds cruelly to Hoodie’s suggestion that they get engaged after high school and move to New York together. The specificity of these insults suggests that Anna-Marie has been exposed to antisemitic remarks at school and home, positioning such antisemitism as learned behavior.

“I sat crouched down on the linoleum floor. I put my hand to my head and knocked off my Borsalino. I could still feel my kippah there, so I left the hat on the floor.”

This passage uses specificity of detail to frame Hoodie’s compliance with the rules of Orthodox Judaism as deeply instinctual. In the midst of an active shooting, Hoodie ensures that his head remains covered with a kippah to be compliant with the expectations of his community. The fact that Hoodie thinks of these details even in a life-and-death situation demonstrates how deeply ingrained they are.

“I also think he was smiling because of the situation with the lawsuit and the high rise. While I was in the ICU, my father and his company were calling reporters and journalists, telling them all about the lawsuit between them and the city of Tregaron, about how the town wouldn’t let the Jews build an apartment building. To avoid the bad publicity, the mayor and town council held an emergency meeting and reversed their decision.”

In this passage, Blum emphasizes Avraham’s focus on work as a central tension in his relationship with Hoodie. The fact that Avraham remains focused on work even while Hoodie is in the ICU makes Hoodie feel that he prioritizes his work for the community over his family.

“The whole thing was like a jacket that didn’t fit me right anymore. But it was the only one I had. I was naked underneath it. I didn’t really want to wear it, but I couldn’t take it off either, because then what would I have?”

Throughout the novel, Hoodie repeatedly compares the Orthodox Jewish tradition to a jacket—a key metaphor in the story. Initially, he compares the tradition to a series of heavy jackets he is required to wear that prevent him from standing up straight. In this passage, he suggests that the tradition no longer fits him, but that he feels as if he has nothing else to replace it with.