There is a real scarcity of comic fiction these days, so I received “Goyhood” gratefully and enjoyed it thoroughly.
The set-up takes a minute to explain. Marty and David Belkin are twins, poor, white, scruffy 12-year-old fatherless boys in fictional Moab, a hot, useless town in rural Georgia. Their mother, Ida Mae Belkin, is 37, peroxide blonde, mildly alcoholic. One day a man shows up at their door. The boys see he is not Mom’s typical visitor who would be wearing a T-shirt, dungarees and work boots with “crescents of dirt under his fingernails.” This man is all in black with a fedora, in the intense heat.
The boys first think it may be protective services, but it is Rabbi Yossi Kugel looking for Jews who may need help. Ida Mae says to everyone’s surprise, “we’re Jews,” and the boys’ lives are changed. Ida Mae becomes the rabbi’s secretary. The boys attend Yeshiva and Marty, renamed Mayer, moves to Brooklyn and marries the daughter of a rich Jewish man who is devoted to the Talmud.
His father-in-law sets up Mayer as a scholar, reading and studying Jewish law and commentaries all day, every day, for about eighteen years. He does nothing else. Mayer’s life is narrow, devoted, with no real interactions with the non-Jewish world. Then his mother dies.
Now in in his own black suit and fedora, he joins his brother to bury Ida Mae. Reading the letter she left for them they learn—surprise!—they are NOT Jewish. She did it on a whim and to improve their lives. David doesn’t care; he never took it to heart. But Mayer, very strictly observant, a literalist, is devastated. It means he is no longer actually married. He must convert at once—and his wife must not know she has been living in sin for decades, so, in phone calls to Sarah, every sentence he utters contains some kind of lie and he is convulsed with guilt.
They have a week until the next possible conversion ceremony for Mayer so David, now wealthy from having invested early in e-cigarettes, mischievously insists they drive to New Orleans, stopping to eat in Tuscaloosa. (Eating, by the way, is nearly impossible for Mayer. The food is unclean; the dishes and kitchens along the way not Kosher. He grows thin and sad.) Of course, the road trip, in an overpowered Dodge Charger, is a preposterous journey. They pick up an injured pit bull, Popeye, and Charlayne, a sexy Black internet influencer.
New Orleans is more than Mayer’s cloistered soul can handle, although beignets are kosher. On the return trip there is an explosion in a fireworks warehouse and a meeting with a famous pop star. Yes, “Goyhood” is over the top, extravagant, wonderful.
