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“Magical Meet Cute” – new novel imbues age-old “golem” theme with romance…and mystery
Review by BERNIE BELLAN I’d never read what would be considered a romance novel before, so when I received an email from a publicist for Harper Collins inviting me to read what was described as a new “rom-com,” I admit I was somewhat hesitant to accept the offer.
But – the premise of the novel, as described in that email was somewhat enticing. Here’s what it said:
“Ettel Resnick is a proud Jewitch woman. After being dumped by her fiancé of seven years, she recreated herself, selling her successful legal practice in Manhattan to open Magic Mud Pottery in Woodstock, New York. But everything changes on the fateful night Ettel returns from yet another singles event at the synagogue—and finds her town papered with antisemitic flyers.
“Desperate for comfort, she turns to the only thing guaranteed to soothe her Jewitch soul. Pottery. Heading to her studio, she gets super drunk, and crafts a golem. Ettel pours her heart into that little clay creature. She gives it everything she’s ever wanted in a partner, etching words onto his body—some sensible, some esoteric—before getting totally naked and burying that golem doll in her backyard.
“But when her ideal man turns up the very next day—and checks every detail inscribed on her clay man’s belly, including loving to play Scrabble and reading her books—she’s left wondering if she’s falling in love with the real deal, or if she’s truly summoned a golem.
“This laugh out loud romantic comedy explores witchcraft from a Jewish angle, fighting back against the anti-Semitic way Jewish witches have been portrayed throughout history. It also features a woman dealing with anti-semitism in her town and turning to the ancient Jewish protector—the golem.”
There are several things wrong with what that publicist wrote, however: First, the main character’s name was not Ettel Resnick, it’s Faye Kaplan. (That mistake alone made me wonder where the publicist got her information. Obviously, she hadn’t read the book.)
But second – and perhaps this is more important, to describe “Magical Meet Cute” as a rom-com is a disservice to a book that is far more than a rom-com.
Yes, it contains some of the elements of a romance novel and it does have some good laughs, but as the book develops it takes on a far more serious tone – and turns into a rollicking good mystery.
After reading something about the author, Jean Meltzer, I discovered that she had just about completed writing the book, but then October 7 happened and it cast a giant shadow over what she had mostly written. As a result, she now says that there is a much more serious overtone to her book than what she had anticipated in writing it.
A good part of “Magical Meet Cute” has to do with antisemitism and how completely shocked so many Jews are when it comes to having to deal with overt displays of antisemitism. In the book, Faye fights back, but others in the Jewish community are less willing to confront the threat posed by a group known as “the Paperboys.”
As the press release noted, the action in the book takes place in the very real town of Woodstock, New York (although I have no idea whether the Woodstock described here bears much resemblance to the real town.)
As for the reference to “witchcraft,” I admit that threw me off somewhat. I have encountered the notion of Jewish witches previously, especially in Alice Hoffman’s brilliant “The Dovekeepers,” but as I read “Magical Meet Cute,” I became much more aware of the notion of “Jewitches” which, in this book, is treated in a positive manner.
But, add to that the introduction of the theme of the “golem” in this novel, and you get something quite a bit more complex than what many readers might expect to find in a typical “rom-com.”
Yes, Faye Kaplan does drunkenly fashion a golem out of clay early on in the novel – and then the very next day a character appears who certainly does seem to tick off all the right boxes as a real golem. But, that’s where this book takes a very interesting turn, as the author explores the notion of the golem in Jewish history.
The theme of antisemitism and how ordinary Jews – just leading their everyday lives, are taken so completely by surprise when they encounter direct – and often vicious antisemitism, is especially hard hitting in “Magical Meet Cute.” And, because the notion of the golem as a magical defender of Jews has been around for centuries (as the author explains), it serves as a very convenient – and enticing device around which to develop a modern-day novel, especially in a time of rampant antisemitism.
That’s also where the book veers from romance to thriller – and Jean Meltzer does a fabulous job of injecting tremendous suspense – and trepidation, into the latter part of what is actually quite a long novel (over 480 pages).
In fact, I could have done with less of the romance and more of the thriller. When Faye Kaplan does meet – and fall in love with the character, who we come to know as “Greg” – who may or not be a real golem, I suppose it would have ruined the story for the two of them to go to bed right off the hop. But Meltzer describes Faye as quite beautiful, while Greg is what I would think would be almost any woman’s fantasy of a perfect male.
Not only is he gorgeous, he’s absolutely devoted to Faye. I won’t let you know whether they consummate their relationship, but there is an entire subplot revolving around Faye’s abandonment issues which prevents her from trusting Greg that is really quite sad, although totally credible.
As I made my way through “Magical Meet Cute,” I kept asking myself: Would someone who isn’t Jewish enjoy this book quite as much as someone who is? After all, there are so many references that, if you weren’t Jewish, you’d be wondering just what the heck they mean?
One that comes to mind off the top though – and it’s one I’ve never encountered previously, is Faye’s repeated use of the expression “Haman’s hat,” which she says whenever she’s quite surprised by something. I did a bit of reading on the subject but I simply couldn’t find an explanation why someone would say “Haman’s hat” as say, a substitute for something like “holy s_it.” (Maybe someone will enlighten me.)
Something else that intrigued me was Faye’s predilection for “hard kosher salami.” I realized early on it was her go-to comfort food, but aside from how unhealthy it is to eat, I couldn’t help but think of its phallic overtones. (By the way, Meltzer does enjoy using the term “shvantz” as a term of endearment in describing a certain part of Greg’s anatomy. I would have thought she might have resorted to the more commonly used “schmeckle.”)
When Meltzer introduces the group terrifying the Jews of Woodstock as “the Paperboys,” it’s obviously a not-too-thinly veiled reference to one of Donald Trump’s favourite white supremacist groups, “the Proudboys.” (I apologize if I’ve offended any Trump lovers. After all, there were “many good people on both sides,” as Trump suggested, during the white supremacist march through Charlottesville in 2017, weren’t there?)
“Magical Meet Cute” does have so much more to offer than simply a romance, but if I do have one qualm about the book it is that it so very long. It could have been cut down to no more than 300 pages but, having said that, I applaud the author for combining two quite different genres into quite the good read.
By the way, the book is slated for release August 27, but it’s available online right now from Amazon.
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In the Michigan Senate race, Jews should (and will) vote for democracy
Michigan Jews are feeling the ground shifting beneath us. For the first time, the Democratic candidate to represent Michigan in the United States Senate is not an advocate of unconditional support for Israel’s government. And he is one of a growing number of progressive leaders pushing the Democratic establishment to fight for the values it claims to stand on.
Many in our communities hoped for a different outcome in yesterday’s primary and feel destabilized by the shifting political terrain. Others feel hopeful, for the first time, of being represented on the electoral stage. Moving into the general election, when the stakes are so high, I would like to refocus the conversation on our shared values.
When I cast my ballot Tuesday, and when I cast it again in November, I do so with the wisdom of Pirkei Avot 1:18 in mind: on three things does the world stand — on justice, on truth, and on peace, as it is said: “execute the judgment of truth and peace in your gates” (Zechariah 8:16). Rabban Shimon ben Gamaliel and others of his generation were building communities out of the rubble of the Temple’s destruction. They asked themselves, as they rebuilt: what are our core principles? What values need to sit at the center of this new order? Out of the wreckage, what new world will we create?
Let those three pillars be our voting guide.
Din — Judgment. Who will fight for fairness? Who is beholden to corporate interests and who will stand for economic equality? A candidate’s record on wages, on housing, on the right to organize — these will show commitment to justice.
Emet — Truth. Who tells us the truth, even when it costs them? In the words of former Rep. Andy Levin, we are looking for “authenticity, bravery, and truth-telling.” Who can help to rebuild trust in our public servants and institutions?
Shalom — Peace. Which candidate will challenge the military-industrial complex? Who will work to reduce war and violence in our world, rather than fund more of it? At home and abroad.
In this election, we have an unusually clear lens for understanding a candidate’s values: immigration enforcement. Immigration and Customs Enforcement — ICE — is where our society’s authoritarian drift is most visible and most violent. So as we lean on the pillar of Shalom to consider candidates, we can ask a direct question: is this someone who will bakesh shalom v’radfehu — seek peace and pursue it — for the people in ICE’s crosshairs? Or will they support the expansion of a paramilitary force into our schools and neighborhoods?
Justice, Truth and Peace — these are the values upon which “the world stands.” But what does it mean for the world to stand? A classic rabbinic commentary interprets this as the preservation of human society. Which candidate will protect the environment, will put people over profit, will choose the survival of our communities over the balance sheet of the insurance, arms and oil industries? By this measure, the idea that Jews who want unconditional aid for Israel should therefore vote for a candidate who would strip away abortion rights, gut health care, and undermine the basic machinery of democracy is, to use a technical term, cuckoo banana-cakes.
And then there is the issue of antisemitism. My teacher Rabbi Mordechai Liebling explains that on the left, antisemitism is a bug and not a feature — a problem that can be and must be addressed. On the right, antisemitism is a foundational worldview. The real threat to American Jews is the far right. It’s they who promulgate conspiracy theories and it’s they who deploy ICE into our communities to kidnap our neighbors.
I personally think that Dr. El-Sayed is not antisemitic — certainly not any more than the general population. But I don’t need to convince you of that. What I hope you’ll hear is that Abdul is someone with whom we share core values — that he is someone the Jewish community can work with. What I hope you’ll hear is that a liberal-fascist coalition is out of the question, and that a liberal-left coalition is the only path forward. In November, we will elect a politician who will work with the people and not against us. Our loyalty is not to any party, but to the movement for a true democracy — and to the leaders who will work with us to advance it.
The ground doesn’t have to shift beneath us; we can be a part of moving that ground, of redrawing the politics of the possible. May Zechariah’s vision of justice, truth and peace come to pass, speedily and in our days, and may we merit to help make it so.
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On El-Sayed, Michigan’s Jewish Democrats aren’t all ready to unite behind nominee
Following Abdul El-Sayed’s narrow win of the Democratic nomination for Michigan’s open Senate seat, the state’s Jewish Democrats are reflecting on whether the divisions El-Sayed’s candidacy brought to the fore can be bridged before November.
Jewish voters make up just 1.4% of the electorate in Michigan. But the community had become deeply invested in the race, with Jews both in fierce opposition and fiery support of El-Sayed in an election that had become a proxy fight over the Gaza war and the U.S.-Israel relationship.
Jewish former Michigan congressman Andy Levin, who had endorsed El-Sayed, believes Democrats will get behind the nominee in the interest of defeating Republican Mike Rogers — a race that could determine which party controls the Senate. Pre-primary polls found Rogers leading El-Sayed by single digits.
“Shame on any Jewish Democrat if they’re going to go vote for Mike Rogers and put our democracy at risk because they can’t find their way to supporting Abdul El-Sayed, who is such a brilliant person, just because he doesn’t share their exact beliefs on Israel and Palestine,” Levin told the Forward. “That’s ridiculous.”
Levin lost his Senate seat to Rep. Haley Stevens after heavy spending against him by AIPAC, the campaign fundraising group advocating for unrestricted U.S. aid to Israel. An AIPAC-associated super PAC spent some $32 million in a failed attempt to get Stevens the Senate nomination.
Stevens endorsed El-Sayed for the general election Wednesday morning. But some Jews who voted for Stevens see no possibility for reconciliation. Rabbi Asher Lopatin of the modern Orthodox synagogue Kehillat Etz Chayim in suburban Detroit had endorsed Stevens in the primary, alarmed by El-Sayed’s association with the controversial Twitch streamer Hasan Piker and condemnation of Israel as a genocidal and apartheid state.
In a TV interview Wednesday, El-Sayed used the term “bloodthirsty” to describe Israel.
“To have so many people vote for someone who is so hurtful to the Jewish community, the things that the Jewish community values — I think it’s depressing,” Lopatin told the Forward.
Lopatin has made up his mind that he will not vote for El-Sayed in the general election, but he also isn’t yet sold on Rogers, the Republican nominee.
“I have to study him more,” Lopatin said. “But I will not vote for Abdul El-Sayed, definitely, and I would tell people they should not.”
Lopatin said he wishes Stevens would condemn El-Sayed rather than endorse him.
Still, others see El-Sayed as the best candidate to face Rogers in the general — and don’t want him to pull back on the issues that won him the nomination. Barbara Weinberg Barefield, a photographer outside Detroit who helped organize the group Jews for Abdul, said she has confidence El-Sayed will win the general — attributing the close primary race partly to the influence of outside money supporting Stevens.
“He was able to win this election in the face of close to $70 million of outside funding going to bolster his opponent,” Weinberg Barefield said. “This election is showing us, and elections around the country are showing us, that elections are not to be bought — they’re to be earned.”
Roslyn Schindler, a retired professor who taught Holocaust studies at Wayne State University, was also among El-Sayed’s Jewish supporters, even as she disagreed with him on his lack of support for a two-state solution. She stressed the importance of beating Rogers in November irrespective of disagreements on Israel.
“My motto is and will be: vote blue, no matter who,” Schindler told the Forward. “I am hoping that all Democrats realize that to do otherwise will be self-destructive and just plain wrong.”
Others are taking a wait-and-see approach. Decky Alexander, chair of the Michigan Democratic Jewish Caucus — which endorsed Stevens in the primary — isn’t issuing an endorsement in the general election yet.
She said the close margin El-Sayed won by, about 15,000 votes, gives her hope that El-Sayed will see the need to unify his party. A start, she said, would be focusing less on AIPAC during his general election campaign.
“There’s a lot of opportunity on Abdul’s side to be a better bridge maker versus kind of a bridge burner,” Alexander told the Forward. “The cards are his. It’s his responsibility to initiate.”
In his election night speech, El-Sayed didn’t mention AIPAC by name, instead speaking more generally about getting money out of politics.
On Wednesday, he addressed Jewish Michiganders directly: “I want you to know that my commitment to your safety, my commitment to Jewish safety, is the same commitment that I have to the safety of my own daughters.”
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‘The Yiddish Teacher’ (Poem)
One thing about the late Forverts staff writer and critic Miriam Hoffman — she cooked a heavenly eggplant in tomato sauce.
And why do I know this about one of our writers? Hoffman, a veritable lexicon-caldron of Yiddish sayings and terms she’d archived from her own mother’s distinct poylish dialect, was many things: A distinguished long-term professor of Yiddish at Columbia University; a theater critic turned playwright who turned the New York Public Theatre’s founding director Joseph Papp into a serious supporter of Yiddish culture; a child survivor of Siberian exile, and so much more.
As she encountered immigrant American life in da Bronx, the tiny dynamo that was Hoffman delighted in becoming American, freely advising everyone on the best consumer goods this country had to offer. A country that was a home and refuge to her, her parents, her husband and so many in her vast circle of Yiddishist friends, students, fellow writers, educators and chosen family. And then, once upon a time, she welcomed me into her Florida home for an overnight stay, so that I could record her jaw-dropping tales of how she and her beloved mameloshn Yiddish both survived the khurbn, the Holocaust. And talk into the video camera she did.
But first, there was lunch.
Rest in all your ferocious deliciousness, Miriam Hoffman, and thank you. For the eggplant, the advice on the best toothpaste, the stories — and for doing everything, everything, everything possible, to transmit your Yiddish to another generation.
The Yiddish Teacher
The Yiddish teacher bending saying:
In my book you’ll learn
the alefbeys through pictograms like so:
The gimel is a camel
The beys a house
You see?
The Yiddish teacher has an archive
in her bedroom closet
The folding doors open revealing:
shoeboxes filled with
stories and
poems and
songs she
wrote as a child
in the displaced persons camp
on paper donated to Jewish refugees
The Yiddish teacher was once
seated in back
of a transport truck
with all the other refugees
Trying to go over the Swiss Alps
to Mandate Palestine
The Yiddish teacher was born
in a Siberian prison camp
“people were starving, sure,
but there was sex”
The Yiddish teacher was the only
woman writer on staff
at the Forverts Yiddish newspaper
The Yiddish teacher remembers
the first time her family ate
Chef-Boy-Ar-Dee spaghetti and
meatballs
from a can
in the Bronx
We go shopping together
The Yiddish teacher loves Rao’s tomato sauce
“it’s the best”
The Yiddish teacher recommends
“Mavis Toothpaste”
It’s the best
The Yiddish teacher loves to
go fly fishing
The Yiddish teacher is short and slim
and round
I think
if I cup my hands together
I can
carry her around always
— Chana Pollack
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