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    Sweet Like Sugar
    Sweet Like Sugar
    Sweet Like Sugar
    Ebook319 pages4 hours

    Sweet Like Sugar

    By Wayne Hoffman

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    With eloquence and wit, Wayne Hoffman explores the unlikely camaraderie between a young Jewish man and an Orthodox rabbi, in this rich, insightful novel about love, honesty, faith, and belonging.

    In Yiddish, there is a word for it: bashert—the person you are fated to meet. Twentysomething Benji Steiner views the concept with skepticism. But the elderly rabbi who stumbles into Benji's office one day has no such doubts. Jacob Zuckerman's late wife, Sophie, was his bashert. And now that she's gone, Rabbi Zuckerman grapples with overwhelming grief and loneliness.

    Touched by the rabbi's plight, Benji becomes his helper—driving him home after work, sitting in his living room listening to stories. Their friendship baffles everyone, especially Benji's sharp-tongued, modestly observant mother. But Benji is rediscovering something he didn't know he'd lost. Yet the test of friendship, and of both men's faith, lies in the difficult truths they come to share. With each revelation, Benji learns what it means not just to be Jewish, but to be fully human—imperfect, striving, and searching for the pieces of ourselves that come only through another's acceptance.

    "A story that is beautifully told, profound and funny." --Jonathan Rosen, author of Joy Comes In The Morning

    "A stirring story about the face of love on many different levels." --Carolyn Hessel

    "An unforeseen tale of friendship and faith." --Dave King, author of The Ha-Ha

    Wayne Hoffman is a writer and editor whose cultural reporting has appeared in the Washington Post, Village Voice, The Forward, The Advocate, and elsewhere. Wayne is currently deputy editor of Nextbook Press. He lives in New York City and the Catskills.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherKensington Books
    Release dateMay 26, 2011
    ISBN9780758274380
    Sweet Like Sugar

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    Reviews for Sweet Like Sugar

    4/5

    16 ratings2 reviews

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    • 5/5
      This book is fantastic.I was not sure how this book would be able to hold my interest. I was not even sure if it could. Too often books have been written as excellent but I could not even get through the first few chapters. Unlike this book. I finished reading this book within two days.Such a good writing to focus on the friendship between a young gay guy with an old rabbi, who turned out to be as much homophobic as often expected. Somehow, their fondness of each other made them reassess their lives. I was a little turned off by Benji's habit of finding faults with whoever he was dating. I thought the friendship with the old rabbi was because he missed his own grandfather. This was not stated so. However, the old rabbi did somehow helped him to get more comfortable with his religion and hence easier to settle down with his Bashert. I did not really care for the flashbacks. They did not help the story to be stronger. In fact, I was more eager to skip the flashbacks and to get on with the ongoing story. Still, the flashbacks did not really make the whole book to be that slow.I love the characters in the book. The rabbi cracked me up when he talked about the kids at his door for Halloween. Good bonding story, with inserted humor, though mild.
    • 4/5
      When an elderly Rabbi comes into his office to lie down on his couch to recover from the heat, little does Benji realise how much his life is about to change. Benji is in his late twenties, a lapsed Jew but still staunchly proud of his heritage, what does he have to do with this octogenarian Orthodox Rabbi? Initially nothing passes between Benji and the Rabbi, but as the Rabbi's visits become a regular part of Benji's day, and even after the heat passes and the Rabbi no longer needs the use of his couch, Benji maintains contact, offering the Rabbi help where needed.The two men become good friends despite their differences, but will this relationship survive when Benji reveals to the Rabbi that he is gay?The first thing that struck me before I had finished page one was that how well written this is, and very soon the story had me drawn in too. It is a rewarding read showing how age need not be a factor in friendship, and that giving reaps its own rewards, as over the course of the novel Benji finds the one thing that has so far eluded him.

    Book preview

    Sweet Like Sugar - Wayne Hoffman

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