A powerful love story with a purpose:
to challenge Jewish customs concerning
women, marriage, and equality.

The award-winning author of Rashi's Daughters, Maggie Anton, has written a wholly transformative novel that takes characters inspired by Chaim Potok and ages them into young adults in Brooklyn in the 1950s — a time of Elvis and Marilyn, communist scares and polio vaccines, postwar Jewish migration to Israel and America. When journalist Hannah Eisin interviews Rabbi Nathan Mandel, a controversial Talmud professor, she persuades him to teach her the mysteries of the text forbidden to women though it might cost him his job if discovered. Secret meetings and lively discussions bring the two to the edge of a line neither dares to cross, testing their relationships with Judaism and each other.

 

"The Choice is about the choices Jews make and the rules we break for reasons of conscience, consideration, logic, and love. Buy this book for the endearing romance at its core and get a feminist brief for women's inclusion in sacred space and communal life, plus twenty brilliant Talmud lessons for free. A surfeit of riches."

--Letty Cottin Pogrebin, author of twelve books including Deborah, Golda, and Me and Shanda