The Matzah Ball

[EDIT: I've been reading other reviews as I was reminded of this book and I don't think I even got to the part where Rachel uses a joke about killing Palestinians as “flirtation”. That is absolutely fucking disgusting and genocide is not a joke. I had gathered the author was Zionist from some other throwaway lines in the beginning but this is beyond evil. I've changed my rating to reflect that.]

As starved as I am for Jewish novels, especially Jewish romances and Jewish holiday books, this was too much for me too finish. There were flaws I could look past - a LOT of telling and not showing - yet other things kept piling up until I simply couldn't go on.

I'll try not to spoil anything as I go, but:

- the sassy gay best friend & sassy Black best friend tropes rolled into Mickey. Not only was it cringey at best, the attempts at AAVE were BAD, and I'm not even Black.

- Rachel's chronic illness was a plus for me, but the treatment of Paul in-story, who has a visible disability, was really weird and infantilizing? It was jarring to read about a character promoting awareness for invisible disabilities while treating another disabled character like a baby.

- We're supposed to see Jacob as this wonderful, if broken and misguided, young man, but honestly he was oblivious and self centered to the point of evil. I got halfway through and the way he uses his money and power over Rachel to humiliate, control, and undermine her was at one point even triggering. She is incapable of escaping from him even in her own home because the narrative - and every character in it - are obsessed with forcing her into situations with him. It's not “romantic” when someone uses their influence to force their help on you no matter if you want it or not, and again, I find it really upsetting for a disability narrative to present that as sweet on Jacob's part. So many people with visible disabilities are touched without their permission by “well meaning” folks in public, and if they protest or refuse the “help”, they're often violently accosted or harassed for it. Presenting the idea that we should accept it as the intended gesture and any protestation is just being “fiery” is asinine.

- Continuing on this thread, the entire way Jacob approaches Rachel in the first place is awful. Without going in depth, basically he decides that because she doesn't spill her guts on their first meeting, she “deserves” what he does because she isn't “honest”. Nothing in the narrative ever makes him think he's not immediately owed her entire life story, including the chronic illness she's kept from her own workplace for over a decade. This idea that a romantic interest is automatically owed your darkest secrets is poisonous, and the way Jacob abuses Rachel and then barely apologizes for it just highlights how. Jacob is so oblivious to Rachel's feelings, so focused on himself that he can only view her and her life through himself and his own experiences, that he can't even admit to himself that forcing ANYONE to do what he had Rachel do is horrible, regardless of health.

Maybe there's some great aspect that I'm missing, but I just could not find any reason to continue on with this book. None of the characters held me at all; even Rachel, who I mostly liked, was ruined by her ableism and her interactions with Mickey because of how he was written. As a librarian, I can say for a fact that there are almost zero Hanukkah books written for adults, and it's really disappointing that of the few, this is what we have.