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Isaac Blum
Photo by Milton Lindsay
SASHA ROGELBERG | STAFF WRITER
H e’s an author — not an architect — but Isaac Blum is con-
cerned with windows and mirrors nonetheless.

In his debut novel, “The Life and Crimes of Hoodie
Rosen,” published by Philomel Books on Sept. 13, Blum must strike
the balance between sharing a story rich with Jewish themes and
culture with a broader young adult audience.

“You want your book to be a mirror to Jewish people, reflecting
their experience and speaking to them that way,” Blum said. “And
you also want it to be accessible enough that it opens a window into
that world for non-Jewish readers.”
Blum, 33 and a Bala Cynwyd native
and resident, has straddled lines of
Jewish and secular most of his life. It’s
a crux in his coming-of-age, which
he prudently wove into the plot of
“Hoodie Rosen,” his fictional Jewish
bildungsroman. The teenage Yehuda “Hoodie” Rosen
must navigate a recent move his family
and his Orthodox community made
to the small, near-Jewless town of
Tregaron, where he is distracted from
his yeshiva studies by a young gentile
woman, who, in addition to living a
culturally drastically different life than
Hoodie’s, is also the daughter of the
town’s mayor who opposes the large
migration of Orthodox Jews to her town.

As the romance between Hoodie and his
star-crossed crust escalates, so, too, does
the antisemitism the bigoted townsfolk
incur against the Jewish residents.

“The Life and Crimes of Hoodie
Rosen” was inspired by the increase
of violent antisemitism from
2016 to 2019, which culmi-
nated in the deadly shooting
at a Jersey City, New Jersey,
kosher grocery store.

The attack filled Blum with
a sense of urgency. The shoot-
ing also occurred in tandem
with a dispute in the Hudson
Valley, New York, where a
largely non-Jewish com-
munity opposed the devel-
opment of a high rise that
would house an Orthodox
community. Blum paid spe-
cial attention to how large
communities of Jews became
targets of antisemitism.

“When you have a group that, for
different reasons has to move together
because of their religious rituals — the
way they have to walk to synagogue on
the Sabbath since they can’t be in driv-
ing distance, all those sorts of things —
I think it creates more natural tension
that can lead to violence more easily,”
Blum said.

Current events gave Blum’s novel a
clear direction, but so did Blum’s own
life. His mother was a Conservative Jew
(Blum believes that she was the first
woman to be a member of Adath Israel
without her husband), and his father
was an atheist.

Looking back on his upbringing in
Bala Cynwyd, Blum recognized the
divide in the Jewish culture there:
While many Jewish community mem-
bers regularly attended synagogue and
Jewish day schools, others were secular
or culturally Jewish.

“There is this disconnect between
them, but I think there’s always been this
natural line between so-called ‘Torah
Jews’ and ‘not Torah Jews’,” Blum said.

“One of the reasons I wanted to write
the book ... [was to find] where that line
is, and does that line need to exist?”
Blum’s life circumstances allowed him
to see either side of the line. An English
major who later went on to receive his
master’s of fine arts in creative writ-
ing from Rutgers University-Camden,
Blum read Chaim Potok, expanding his
Jewish education. To balance his writ-
ing projects with the need to find a job
after school, Blum taught at Orthodox
schools, where the schedule gave him
the flexibility to write.

In the novel, Hoodie is infused with
much of Blum’s personality: his dry,
witty sense of humor; his inability to
take things seriously. Certainly, Blum’s
own experience with his Jewish identity
and experiences working with Orthodox
teens informed the book heavily.

But Blum was careful not to copy his
experiences or create too many paral-
lels between his life and Hoodie’s. He
wanted to avoid the “sacred responsi-
bility” an author may have to recreate
all the details of real life and of history.

At the same time, Blum is happy to
shoulder some of the responsibility
of representing Judaism in literature.

“Hoodie Rosen” feels personal to Blum,
but he also felt it was important to
depict Orthodox Jewry — though not
the type of Jewry with which he iden-
tifies — as something to celebrate and
find community in, not run away from.

“I am proud of having a book — I
mean it’s a book with a kid with tzitzit
walking down the street,” Blum said.

“And there’s very, very few represen-
tations of Orthodox Judaism in young
adult literature.”
Blum is writing another Jewish com-
ing-of-age novel to be published in
spring 2024. JE
srogelberg@midatlanticmedia.com JEWISHEXPONENT.COM
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