Rabbis of the Garden State

by Daniel Meltz

In the suburbs of New Jersey, where temple gossip flows like Manischewitz wine, eleven-year-old Andy becomes entangled in a whirlwind of maternal quirks and religious intrigue. His mother’s bizarre obsession with Rabbi Landy transforms their once-quiet life above a candy store into a tale of surprises.

Andy’s world features a colorful a fiery sister, an invisible brother, a precociously sexual savant best friend with green teeth, and a foul-mouthed neighbor who rivals the 50-Foot Woman. As he navigates from confusion to understanding, his journey is filled with humor and heartfelt moments.

When forced into yeshiva with the rabbi’s insufferable sons, Andy becomes drawn to his magnetic Talmud teacher, Rabbi Loobling. His exploration of faith, desire, and family secrets unfolds from the streets of the Garden State to the halls of college, revealing the complex adults around him.

Rabbis of the Garden State delivers a sharp look at synagogue life laced with teenage yearning. This powerful portrayal of suburban Jewish life in the ’60s is both funny and moving. As Andy transitions to adulthood, the mysteries of childhood unravel, exposing secrets and deep truths about family, faith, and the unexpected twists of love. Daniel Meltz’s beautifully crafted debut novel captures the spirit of an era and delves into the timeless questions of belonging, belief, and the complicated relationships that shape us all.

Praise for Rabbis of the Garden State“Roll over Philip Roth and Saul Bellow. Poet Daniel Meltz has written a Jewish growing-up/coming-of-age novel that will knock your socks off. Wry, hilariously funny, deftly touching, emotionally accurate about being an adolescent, a perfect piece of sociology about suburban Jewish families and their complicated relationship to religion and its leaders, Rabbis of The Garden State is also swooningly, deliciously, romantically—gay!”
—Felice Picano, author of The Secret Lives of Children

“ Rabbis of The Garden State is an absolute joy from beginning to end. Fresh and funny and charming, it brings to mind Holden Caulfield if he had had a sense of humor and gone to yeshiva. It concerns a divorced mother and her eleven-year-old gay son, both struggling with forbidden loves in the not-so-swinging 1960s. It mines those secret spaces of childhood as a bright-but-awkward gay kid experiences those first longings for other boys (and one hot rabbi) while at the same time learns that his out-of-control mother might be schtupping a different rabbi…who also happens to be her (fake) psychoanalyst. The most delicious and poignant mayhem ensues. I loved every minute of it!”
—Blair Fell, best-selling author of The Sign for Home and writer for Queer As Folk

“Entertaining as hell.” —Oren Rudavsky, director of The Treatment and Hiding and Seeking

“With an F in Deportment from his sixth-grade teacher and a dangerously needy mother, whip-smart Andy Baer at the outset of “Rabbis of the Garden State” Is riding “the line between brat and delinquent” (this state of affairs doesn't include what he does with the skeevy Georgie Garr downstairs). As Andy comes of age in the lubricious 60s and 70s, both mother and son fall obsessively in love with rabbis who cross the line. Can they be stopped? Against a screen of priceless period detail—Maypo, The Man from U.N.C.L.

Genres: LGBT, Adult

304 pages, Paperback

Published March 4, 2025

Reviews

[ancientreader · Rating 4 out of 5]

First of all: genius title, absolutely genius. It suggests a sightseeing guide, doesn't it? Which is entirely appropriate for an episodically structured bildungsroman.

Daniel Meltz's protagonist, Andy Baer, does indeed have a rabbi-heavy time of it growing up. There's Rabbi Landy, aka Rabbi Rick, or just Rick, with whom Andy's mother is involved -- I say "involved" for the avoidance of spoilers about the nature of that relationship. And there's Rabbi Aaron Loobling, the chief object of Andy's adolescent fantasy life at the yeshiva to which his mother has sent him. Yeshivas, of course, are thickly populated with rabbis, though no others are as important to Andy's psyche as these two.

Andy's a memorable character. He's eleven when we first meet him, flying high the flag of his F in "deportment," a mouthy little horndog sexually experimenting with his somewhat grimy next-door neighbor. (For the record, there's no explicit sex involving minors, and Andy's messing-around partner is only slightly older than he is.) Mr. Baer is in absentia, having ditched the family altogether; Mrs. Baer's parenting is erratic at best and entails a fair bit of slapping. Their smart back-talking kid isn't necessarily the most likeable character you've ever met, but I dare you not to feel for him in his ongoing quest for connection, sexual and emotional. He has a lot of success with the former, not so much with the latter -- until college, by which time he and his older sister, Naomi, have established a combatively affectionate intimacy, and they both attempt to care, if not always adequately, for their younger brother, Toby. At the book's end, a certain self-admitted asshole turns up, to make an offer that I hope Andy will accept.

During the opening chapters of "Rabbis of the Garden State" I wasn't always sure what was going on. This was, I believe, not the result of narrative problems but rather of the fact that the ARC was a PDF and consequently the formatting on Kindle was a mess. So, for instance, sometimes there were paragraph breaks in dialogue, sometimes not; and Meltz isn't the world's biggest fan of dialogue tags. Later in the book, when I knew the characters' voices well, it wasn't difficult to figure out who was speaking. But early on, especially given that events are filtered through an eleven-year-old's POV, disorientation sometimes ensued.

About Andy and his pursuit of sex: he's never outright abused, as often happens to children and adolescents when they flirt and express sexual desire around adults who prove untrustworthy, but a couple of episodes edge close. Andy has one opinion of those episodes; many readers will have another, and they're queasy reading. In spite of that, I found the depiction of Andy's sexuality admirably realistic. Often I think we're afraid to acknowledge that children experience sexual desire, as if that would make it okay for adults to have sex with them. But the whole point is that children's sexuality is childlike (and that's why I stressed, earlier, that Andy's first experiments take place with another child).

I tagged "Rabbis of the Garden State" as having characterization problems, and these are the reason I'm giving four stars rather than five. The difficulties are built into the book's structure and narrative POV: for most of the book Andy's unable to see his mother, for example, as a fully realized person, so neither do we. As for Andy himself, he matures by saltation -- Meltz's narrative skips over the process, and I found myself wanting to know more about how he got from A, to B, to C ...

In short, the moving parts of "Rabbis" don't always mesh as well as they might -- nevertheless, a complicated story about complicated people, and satisfying for all its flaws. I very much want to read whatever Daniel Meltz writes next.

Note, I haven't tagged this YA or NA. Though the POV is tight first-person, and though we leave Andy at the end of his last year in college, "Rabbis of the Garden State" is an adult novel about a young person, not a novel intended specifically for young/new adults.

Many thanks to Mindbuck Media/Rattling Good Yarns and NetGalley for the ARC.

[Andrew Peters]

Rabbis of the Garden State is a quintessential coming of age novel in the tradition of J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, Edmund White’s A Boy’s Own Story, and Douglas Stuart’s more recent Young Mungo. Though well-trod territory – an alienated teen awakening to the world’s injustices – when written well, the subject never gets old, at least for readers like me. What Meltz brings to the table is a likeable and assured voice and an unique setting: a working-class Jewish community in New Jersey in the 1960s and 70s.

Read the rest of my review at Out in Print.

[Tessa1316 · Rating 4 out of 5]

4,5*

Thank you to NetGalley for allowing me to read this.

This was a very quick read for a very slow reader. The writing style completely matched with what I like to read and it had a fast pacing.

Some of the story reminded me of Shuggie Bain, which I also thoroughly enjoyed. Looking at the cover I probably would not have picked it up in a store, which is why I like NetGalley so much.

This book is a pretty wild ride if you go into it blind and, while I think the ending was cliched, was a great deal of fun and intrigue.

[S · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was highly readable, with an interesting narrative. You can tell the author is a poet; the prose itself is very poetic. It is extremely good at capturing the moment: the feeling of multiple voices talking over one another, the frustrations of being eleven, the time period, the complex relationship between siblings, the fantasies of childhood. Because the narrative is so strongly set in the voice of Andy, the reader is often as confused and misled as he is. Andy’s voice in the beginning of the book is very strong, and feels authentic. I actually loved attempting to figure things out through his eyes.
However, as the book progresses, one expects Andy to as well. He doesn’t really seem to, though, even when he is an adult he still narrates with an immaturity that became a little grating. When he displayed growth, it seemed to occur in the parts of time we skipped, and so we were not privy to where it came from.

The setting was rich and lush, and felt authentic. I felt transported to each year we visited, each hot summer, or dull service attended by young Andy. The content was interesting and felt like a unique voice to be heard, but I struggled with an underlying current of internalized hate towards women coming from the main character, as well as the over all blase tone the narrative took with abuse. The subject matter is very serious, and while it is initially handled with a fantastical undertone that comes with the memories of someone recalling their childhood, things get serious quite quickly. While I don’t need a character’s authenticity to be sacrificed for the narrative to condemn evil, and I feel a reader can in fact take that burden on themselves, the particular subject matter felt a little heavy for the way the narrative handled it. It felt at times that Andy, narratively reflecting from adulthood past the current events, would remark that he knew better about something such as his sister now. But his mother never received the same treatment, nor did any of the people who abused him when he was a child. His mother was absolutely abusive to them as kids, but, the narrative still referred to her with all sorts of derogatory names not due to the abuse but due to her being abused. Bea being abused by a religious authority posing as a therapist was often framed as her fault. In fact, Andy often engaged in the same behavior he condemned in his mother, or acted as those who abused her were doing her a favor. While other parts were reflected on, this was pointedly not.

The narrative itself seemed to want to push the idea that much abuse and assault was romantic. That there would have been nothing wrong with Rabbi Loobling assaulting Andy (that Andy, at FOURTEEN would have liked it), that there was nothing wrong with what Loobling did do to the minors in his care. It even seemed to attempt to pull the reader’s heartstrings and frame Avi’s assault and later “apology” as “romantic” as though Avi were the love interest the entire time and not just a carbon copy of his abusive father, while Andy perpetuated his mother’s cycle of victimhood.

Again, I have no issue with a book that handles difficult topics with authentic characters. And I do believe Andy’s thought processes are realistic. It’s that the narrative itself reflects on some portions of Andy’s life with hindsight, it didn’t seem to reflect at all on these topics, but rather sought to frame them in this light. As though the abuse were funny, lighthearted, the victim’s fault, or simply not abuse at all. Even many reviews seemed to portray this book as lighthearted and fun. I’m not sure if it is simply the narrative did not succeed in what it wanted to say about the subject of religious abuse or SA, or the marketing is off on this one, but I personally feel as though it did not land.
The book itself is written extremely well, and I found the characters compelling. I felt the setting was a time machine, transformative, and the dialogue impeccable. I simply could not shake the undercurrent of the narrative that left me unsatisfied with how it handled such dark topics.

This is an ARC review.

[Leah M]

Thank you to Daniel Meltz for sending me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I'm not going to rate this one, as I only got through 68 pages before DNFing this one. But I could tell it wasn't the book for me when I wasn't able to describe a single thing about this book that I was enjoying.

The story moves fairly slowly up to this point, with the setting and the characters laid out and the basic storylines are set up. We are introduced to:

1. Neurotic single mom, who proceeds to drive recklessly, chain smoke, drink and take pills, and throw herself at the new rabbi of her temple (who is married). She physically and verbally abuses them on a regular basis, and seems to have absolutely no redeeming characteristics. She also manages to be ableist within the first two pages.
Featured quote: "Normally she'd keep the fight going until she wound up cracking my sister in the head but not today."

2. Andy, her 11 year old son, and the only one who actually has a role in the story. He's gay, and is old enough to be mortified by his mother's actions even if he doesn't understand them. There's a neighbor boy that he has been experimenting with, Georgie. Despite going to temple services weekly, he still manages to spell words like 'Rush Hashunnah' and 'Shobbis' which I didn't find amusing at all. Those are meaningful holidays, and the prayer books are all embossed with the title of Rosh Hashana or Shabbat prayers, so he should be able to spell these correctly.

3. The younger brother, Toby, is basically just referred to as practically feral, and no one wants to babysit him.

4. The older sister, Naomi, who is 14, only appears in one or two short exchanges, one of which is a fight instigated by the mother.

5. Georgie, the 14 year old neighbor who is either woefully uneducated or has an intellectual impairment, and is hooking up with Andy. At one point, they encounter Andy's rabbi, and afterwards, he learns that a rabbi is 'like a priest for Jewish people,' to which Georgie responds: "'My dad said Hitler shoulda killed all the Jews.'" All Andy does is stop holding hands with him, but doesn't address it at any point.

6. Rabbi Landy, the new rabbi for the congregation. He's married but apparently attractive since all the women are talking about him. He also gives some (very inappropriate) therapy sessions, and based on the transcribed sessions, I don't think he would be able to keep a therapists license.

Here's where things fell apart for me. I stopped reading when I got to the part about Hitler, because it gave me the ick so badly. Eventually I went back and read another 3 chapters to see if Andy would mention it to someone or talk to Georgie about it, but alas, it went unaddressed.

After thinking about it since last night, I realized what was bothering me so much about this. And HERE IS THE ISSUE.
-The story begins in 1966. Andy being 11 means that he was born in 1955, only 10 years after the Holocaust. It isn't inconceivable to think that he could have family members or know people in the congregation who were Holocaust survivors. They weren't all dying out, like they are in the last decade or so. At least one of his peers would have a parent, uncle or aunt, some kind of family member who survived, since the Jewish community is such a tiny one, at only 0.2% of the world's population. It felt like Andy's character was not very smart, since he struggled to understand some things that it would be reasonable for a child of his age to grasp.

Overall, this was not an enjoyable experience. I kept forcing myself to pick up the book to read more, but it never became enjoyable for me, and I found myself distracted by the issues and didn't find the story to be believable. It felt unnecessarily messy, and so many of these flaws could have been left out without impacting the story, such as the ableism and the abuse.

[Cindy Stein · Rating 4 out of 5]

Andy is the middle child of a working-class Jewish family in New Jersey. The book opens in 1966 with Andy 11 years old. We get a detailed portrait of him and especially his mother, a divorced, self-involved woman who develops an obsession with their synagogue's new rabbi. The book moves through Andy's life, up through his last year of college and focuses on his own coming out as gay, and his own obsessions with another rabbi and a number of boys.

Andy's voice as the first person POV narrator is very strong and well developed. His details of the 1960s in the first third of the novel are incredibly well drawn. As someone who grew up in those same years in a lower middle class Jewish family, there was a lot I could identify with.

The novel felt looser in the second half, especially during Andy's high school and college years. I felt that there could have been more information about the outcome of his obsession with a high school classmate and with his explorations of the 1970s NYC gay scene.

I was provided an ARC by the publisher via NetGalley.

[Motherbooker · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rabbis of the Garden State is a warm and thoughtful coming-of-age story set in a Jewish family during the 60s and 70s. It follows Andy Baer as he tries to make sense of family, faith, and his identity as a young gay man. There’s a lot of humour here, but also some heavier, emotional moments.

Andy is a likeable narrator but he's also flawed. This means it's not always easy to agree with him and his views on the people around him. The book does a great job capturing the time period and the close-knit community around him. His relationship with his mother is complicated, and his bond with his rabbi definitely raises some questions.

My main issue was the pacing. Big chunks of Andy’s life are skipped over, and a lot of his growth happens off the page. It made it a little harder to connect with the character during the second part of the book.

Still, this is a well-written and unique read with some really strong character work. If you’re into quieter, character-driven stories with a strong sense of time and place, it’s worth checking out.

[Rebekkah · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not sure I was the target audience for this book, unfortunately. Based on the book's description, I was looking forward to a dry and humorous story set in a Jewish community in 1960s New Jersey, but what I read was a profoundly sad and, at times, quite upsetting, story about a young gay boy with an absent and abusive mother, who herself is victim of abuse. I did enjoy some of the writing, which, at times, felt reminiscent of Chaim Potok. At other points, the writing felt more like a play with stage directions, which wasn't entirely to my taste. I think there are readers out there who would enjoy this one—it just wasn't what I was looking to read.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for providing an e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

[Eric Peterson · Rating 5 out of 5]

RABBIS OF THE GARDEN STATE is earthy, profane, and delightful. It stops in on a young Jewish gay boy growing up in the New Jersey suburbs at ages 11, 16, 19, and 21. It seems that he and his mom both have a thing for hot, married, problematic rabbis. There's a fair amount of trauma and tragedy here (especially for the mother), but the writing is always sharp and funny.

[Kathy Anderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wild ride of a debut novel! Hilarious, sharp, wildly entertaining, and evocative story.

[Luther Siler · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was sent an ARC of this book for review. I closed it on page 4, where James fucking Baldwin is referred to as “that Negro author with the bulging eyes.” No thank you.