There’s nothing derivative about this clever novel, but its tragicomic treatment of death, guilt and Jewish orthodoxy surely pays homage to the late great [Philip Roth] ... [the novel's] first part serves as another reminder of Englander’s extraordinary skill as a short story writer ... When the main part of the novel picks up 20 years later, Englander keeps pushing on [specific] issues with the same fertile wit and tender compassion ... Larry’s fanatical devotion and his anxiety about fulfilling it might look ridiculous to those who don’t feel the vitality of tradition, but the humor of kaddish.com is infused with delight rather than mockery. What a rare blessing to find a smart and witty novel about the unexpected ways religious commitment can fracture a life — and restore it.
Englander’s trademark humor is on display, but most striking and moving about Kaddish.com is the unabashed sweetness of a son’s longing for a father ... In this novel brimming with Talmudic references and biblical allusions, Jewish legal principles and Yiddish-inflected dialogue, Englander mines the tension between the letter and spirit of the law. Kaddish.com reads like a modern-day Hasidic tale in which religious characters are bedeviled by the challenges of upholding God’s word in an all too human world ... Is [Shuli] a benighted fool embarking on a quixotic quest, or a devoted son fulfilling a religious obligation? In this tender, wry and entertaining novel, Englander nimbly juggles these possibilities, creating an endearing hero who stumbles through a world in which the holy and profane are intertwined.
[One of Englander's] gross-out [scenes] is the funniest since Portnoy’s ravishing of raw liver ... Jewish life is depicted with the illuminating intimacy of an insider, as the once-pious Englander also did in [previous works] ... Kaddish.com presents the internet as a distraction from the sacred. It’s a challenge to the modish view that faith is obsolete; a sincere evocation of a traditional view, but not a polemical defence of it. We end the novel feeling—even if we may disagree—that there is a compelling reason why one would want to spurn modernity for a traditional life revolving around worship.
It’s a wonderfully nimble performance, the author’s best book since his heralded debut ... Mr. Englander is particularly astute in his exploration of the vital inconveniences that religious observance vouchsafe in a world in which all technological progress conspires to make experience more passive and remote. Is there a future for ancient rituals if an app can take care of them for us? kaddish.com smuggles profound moral questions under the dress of its light and diverting story.
... a slimmer, simpler, funnier novel that feels more in keeping with [Englander's] short fiction: this is a rollicking, generous-hearted tale of faith, identity and family ... Kaddish.com is at once a romp and a deeply moral book, a novel in which the characters of Larry and Shuli march side-by-side, reflecting on each other, illustrating both the many hypocrisies of organised religion and the deep human need for belief. It’s certainly Englander’s best novel so far, one in which he finally succeeds in harnessing the profound lightheartedness of his stories to the longer form.
... the Pulitzer Prize finalist’s most humorous and moving work since his best-selling debut collection ... Englander’s concerns move beyond those specific to his upbringing by focusing on larger questions about the permeable borders of modernity and tradition, morality and immorality, believers and non-believers, individuals and families—definitive themes in American literature of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries...While the basic story of his latest novel is well-charted territory for Englander, Kaddish.com does not feel like a hollow repetition ... Englander is a master at displaying the way a single decision, made in a private moment, can stay with us for the rest of our lives and haunt our future.
... ingenious if heavy-handed ... In the brilliantly executed scenes that open the novel, Englander shows Larry’s displeasure with having to sit shivah ... The novel’s ending is a little too pat, and coincidences further the narrative. But kaddish.com is an entertaining work about the challenges that tradition can pose ... Despite its flaws, kaddish.com convincingly shows how heavy [the weight of faith] can be.
... deeply affecting and raucously funny ... Englander finds fascinating ways to explore another of his great recurring themes: the points at which modernity and tradition may fruitfully, if uncomfortably—and always comically—collide.
Very polished and provocative ... inevitably troublesome philosophical, moral, and spiritual complications surface and multiply. As his high-strung, stubborn protagonist undergoes surprising metamorphoses, his high-anxiety quandaries embody the practice of deep analysis and interpretation intrinsic to Judaism. Englander is mischievously hilarious, nightmarish, suspenseful, inquisitive, and deliriously tender in this concentrated tale of tradition and improvisation, faith and love.
Nathan Englander’s comic sensibilities drive this novel ... As one might expect, the quick fix is anything but simple, and the ensuing complications generate raucous humor that flavor his poignant coming-to-understanding about grief, the meaning of tradition, and love between fathers and sons.
... a marvelous comic fable ... Englander’s expansive imagination is such that he can convincingly write the part of a secular Jewish hipster and a born-again Jew - and do it with the Yiddish inflections of a Borscht Belt comedian ... [a] delight of a novel.
... [Englander's] best novel to date ... kaddish.com is a more intimate novel than either of Englander's other two ... When he writes about a yeshiva, or the Nachla'ot neighborhood of Jerusalem, [Englander] has an especially keen eye and ear. He has always had an instinct for the telling detail, and it's a continual delight for the reader, as his fans—especially of his short stories—will attest. kaddish.com has many virtues: the brisk pace of the story, the appealing supporting characters, the ongoing suspense. Chief among them, though, is Englander’s abiding sympathy for people and the mistakes they make, and his understanding of the aching need for forgiveness.
The reader may be forgiven for going, 'Wait, what?' Part One of kaddish.com is comic but authentic...But that tension vanishes once Larry returns to orthodoxy, and we’re left with something that feels artificial. Even Shuli’s language is stiff, as if he’s always been Orthodox. But how much can a personality change? Shuli simply doesn’t feel like a future Larry. And because Englander skimps on sharing how this transformation occurred, we can’t make the connection ourselves. And yet this leap is crucial for Englander’s plot ... almost too on the nose, just like kaddish.com’ on the whole. That is, it digs into the friction between ancient ritual and contemporary culture, but not too deeply. It questions how we’re supposed to be living, but because the authentic character Larry becomes the caricature Shuli, the stakes never feel that high. kaddish.com’ is often fun and thought-provoking, but it makes the deep feel superficial, dealing with a solemn topic in a lighthearted way. Some readers might think the combination multiplies pleasure, like putting cheese on a hamburger. But others, like myself, will feel it’s decidedly unkosher, and that one would have been better without the other.
... [a] short, elegant comic novel ... A quick read, with a series of mostly predictable but still enjoyable twists ... Englander’s prose is always sprightly. He makes it easy to turn the page, and he supplies a happy ending of sorts, endorsing the values of duty, family and self-sacrifice. But given the abundant challenges posed by both traditional religion and the digital marvels of our age, the novel also sounds a cautionary note. Perhaps, Englander seems to suggest, it helps to temper even the deepest faith with skepticism.
Might seem to be a satire, but it ends up feeling more like a straightforward, almost simplistic parable designed to teach a spiritual lesson, one which takes very seriously Orthodox views of the soul and afterlife. On the other hand, it contains what is certainly one of the weirdest sex scenes ever found in a nice Jewish story ... Again, Englander demonstrates his skill at placing timeless concerns of Judaism in sharply modern circumstances. This one feels oddly preachy, though.
[An] excellent comic dissection of Jewish-American life ... reads like Chaim Potok filtered through the sensibility of Mel Brooks. Englander writes cogently about Jewish-American assimilation, and, in his practiced hands, he makes Shuli’s journey, both outer and inner, a simultaneously humorous and deeply moving one.
