The Search Committee: Not Quite “a Novel”

From Shiloh Musings:

When I was at the recent Jerusalem International Book Fair, I was offered books to review by a couple of publishing houses.  UrimPublications.com told me to just take a few from their stand, which I did.  One of them is The Search Committee- a novel, by Marc Angel.  When I took it, I didn’t check the copyright date or I would have had discovered that the book is far from recent.  It was published in  2008.

I’ll start with the good…
The book is easy and quick reading, and the main topic is thought-provoking.

Now, why have I titled this “Not Quite a novel?”  Honestly, I don’t see it as a novel.  Here’s the definition of a novel from dictionary.com:

1.

a fictitious prose narrative of considerable length and complexity,portraying characters and usually presenting a sequential organization of action and scenes.

The book does not have any real scenes, actions, character development etc. And there is certainly no “complexity.”

Simply put, Marc Angel,  “Rabbi Emeritus of Congregation Shearith Israel of New York City and founder of the Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals. He is the author and editor of over two dozen books, and this is his first work of fiction,” has tried to humanize two extreme trends/ideologies in American Jewish Orthodoxy aka Torah Judaism.  I wouldn’t be surprised if he hasn’t published a lot about the same exact issue as non-fiction.

In Angel’s opinion there’s a danger to Orthodox Jewry if

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