Stories on being Jewish set in various parts of the world. In the title story, a sex-starved husband in New York is authorized by his rabbi to visit a prostitute, In This Way We Are Wise is on the nonchalant attitude of the inhabitants of Jerusalem to terrorism, while Reb Kringle is on a Jew who works as Santa Claus in a department store.

"The Pulitzer finalist delivers his best work yet--a brilliant, streamlined comic novel, reminiscent of early Philip Roth and of his own most masterful stories, about a son's failure to say Kaddish for his father. Larry is an atheist in a family of orthodox Memphis Jews. When his father dies, it is his responsibility as the surviving son to recite the Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead, every day for eleven months. To the horror and dismay of...

A close-knit Jewish family in London is pushed to the brink when they suspect their daughter is a witch. Hannah and Eric Rosenthal are devout Jews living in North London with their three children and Eric's father Yosef, a Holocaust survivor. Both intellectually gifted and deeply unconventional, the Rosenthals believe in the literal truth of the Old Testament and in the presence of God (and evil) in daily life. As Hannah prepares to publish a sensationalist...