Mazel Tov

by J. S. Margot

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Pub Date 23 Feb 2021 | Archive Date 4 Jan 2021

Pushkin Press

Biographies & Memoirs | Multicultural Interest | Nonfiction (Adult)

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Description

A heartwarming, funny and provocative memoir of a woman navigating clashing cultures during her decades-long friendship with an Orthodox Jewish family, new in paperback

When 20-year-old student J. S. Margot took a tutoring job in 1987, little did she know it would open up an entire world.

In the family's Orthodox Jewish household she would encounter endless rules - 'never come on a Friday, never shake hands with a man' - and quirks she had not seen before: tiny tubes on the doorposts, separate fridges for meat and dairy products. Her initial response was puzzlement and occasionally anger, but as she taught the children and fiercely debated with the family, she also began to learn from them.

Full of funny misunderstandings and unexpected connections, Mazel Tov is a heartwarming, provocative and disarmingly honest memoir of clashing cultures and unusual friendships - and of how, where adults build walls, sometimes only children can dissolve them.

Advance Praise

• 'A gentle chronicle of empathy and understanding' - Guardian

• 'Margot's is an exceptional voice, illuminating a section of society rarely seen in a refreshingly frank manner. Mazel Tov is a book about finding familiarity in the strange, but also the stranger in ourselves, in which courage and humour save us from the usual romanticising. Any reader interested in the central questions of our time will find enlightenment here' - Deborah Feldman, author of the New York Times bestseller 'Unorthodox'

• 'A brave and important contribution to our understanding of memory' - Daniel Okrent, author of 'The Guarded Gate'

• 'So much more than a good read... What makes Mazel Tov especially attractive is that the author effortlessly succeeds in depicting real-life characters' - Cutting Edge

• 'A gentle chronicle of empathy and understanding' - Guardian

• 'Margot's is an exceptional voice, illuminating a section of society rarely seen in a refreshingly frank manner. Mazel Tov is a...