"When this didn't happen, it was the last thing we expected. "This is the voice of the Ladies Auxiliary, the group of women at the heart of this close-knit community, and it is their voices that tell of how a carefully structured world begins to unravel with the arrival of Batsheva, young, beautiful, a convert, and a widow with a small child. "Batsheva's unconfined joy in the rituals of her adopted religion - why does she sing so loudly in shul? - seems odd and even slightly improper to the ladies of the Auxiliary, who pride themselves on their modesty, domesticity, and the strictness of their observance. How can you lay claim to any of these virtues if you have such a thing as a tattoo? How can it be that Batsheva shows no interest in marrying again? What sort of an influence is she having on the teenage girls who love to talk to her - and seem to tell her much more than they will tell their own mothers? And, most of all, is it really right that she is spending so much time with Yosef, apple of the ladies' eye, son of the rabbi, the great hope for the future?. From The Critics Publishers Weekly The world of this confident, insightful debut novel is the tightly knit Orthodox Jewish community of Memphis, Tenn., a social structure that unravels when an unconventional New York convert settles there with her five-year-old daughter. Newly widowed Batsheva Jacobs is both shockingly modern and fervently spiritual. She lovingly raises her daughter, Ayala, in the Orthodox tradition, but she sings loudly and enthusiastically at shul (perhaps a sign of unseemly ego), visits the mikvah to cleanse herself (an act that raises eyebrows, since she has no husband), and she wears flowing clothes that show her figure--all of which is noted suspiciously by the local women whose common goal is to preserve tradition. In Memphis, where Shabbos dinner includes fried chicken and black-eyed peas, that task isn't easy. Taking a job as art teacher at the girls' school, blonde, green-eyed Batsheva is soon a beloved confidante of the community's female teenagers, but when she allows them to wear makeup and miniskirts on a ski trip, and becomes close to the Rabbi's beloved 22-year-old son, she's the subject of cruel gossip. After one of her students runs away with a non-Jewish, older boyfriend, Batsheva is blamed. The narrator, one of the housewives fiercely protective of the insular community, tells the story in third-person plural: "little changed in this city where we have always lived"--a statement rendered untrue, of course, as the community breaks into discord. Caught in the middle are Ayala and the respected and goodhearted Mimi Rubin, the rabbi's wife, who begins to believe rumors about her son's attachment to Batsheva, and panics. Generous with humor and compassion, Mirvis paints tenderly nuanced portraits of strong female characters while scrutinizing an entrenched religious subculture whose traditions are threatened by modern temptations. Guilt, passion, prejudice, loneliness and independence--common themes in Jewish literature--are explored with sensitivity in a gentle story that captures its milieu with tolerant understanding, and plucks the heartstrings. Agent, Nicole Aragi. 7-city author tour. (Oct.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information. Library Journal Life in Memphis's Orthodox community is as it always has been, until a free-spirited widow arrives with her young daughter. Now alone in the world, Batsheva is looking for a close-knit community and has heard that Memphis, the hometown of her late husband, is pleasant. Uninhibited and artistic, she raises suspicion immediately among the Orthodox women in the community. A convert to Judaism, Batsheva observes the holidays and rituals witH...

 Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc. 0393048144 / 9780393048148
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