High Holiday Sutra
A novel by Allan Appel

"Written with great energy and humor. The characters are beautifully drawn - my favorite is the narrator’s father, sitting in shul listening to baseball scores."

- Rodger Kamenetz, author of The Jew in the Lotus

"I’ve never heard a voice such as Jonah’s in High Holiday Sutra. It captures a period and perspective that have been marginalized, if not hidden. The book is an inspiration." - Joan Rosenbaum, Director; The Jewish Museum, New York

A creative tour de force, High Holiday Sutra is a novel about human love, spiritual fulfillment, and our efforts to achieve both in the midst of the nerve-wracking religious upheavals sweeping our lives as the century and millennium speed to their ends.

At Rabbi Jonah Grief’s previous pulpit during his wife’s fatal battle with cancer, he authorized Buddhist meditation classes in the synagogue. Now he is trying to rescue the last loves of his life - Judaism, spirituality, and his congregation. With a heartbreaking and hilarious Yom Kippur sermon, Jonah preaches passionately, trying to earn himself a job with a new flock.

Jonah summons up the era of the 1960s takeovers, a first marriage, and the spiritual journeys provided by drugs and hallucinatory mysticism. Within the framework of this tragicomic Jewish-Buddhist love story, Appel gracefully takes on one of the critical religious issues of the 1990s - can we stay true to tradition and keep our faith relevant to our lives as lived today?

Allan Appel is the author of The Rabbi of Casino Boulevard, Finalist for the national Jewish Book Award. His work has appeared in The National Jewish Monthly and National Lampoon.

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