Rating: 
Summary: A Fabulous Novel That Will Touch Your Heart!
Review: According to the Talmud, Rev Yehuda taught that 40 days before a male child is conceived, a voice from heaven announces whose daughter he is going to marry, literally a match made in heaven! In Yiddish, this perfect match is called "bashert," a word meaning fate, destiny - or one's soul mate. Ruchama King has written a gem of a novel about a woman and two men in search of their "besherts." These three lonely people are Americans, all observant Jews, who have moved to Jerusalem to make new lives for themselves. After years of unsuccessfully searching for the "right one," they decide to seek help from two local matchmakers.
Beth, approaching forty, is attractive, extremely independent and very conscious that she is one of the few women her age who does not wear a head covering - a sign of marriage. She has never been touched, nor kissed, by any male other than her father. And her biological clock keeps reminding her that her prospects are dwindling with every tick. Akiva is a sensitive, spiritual, appealing man, with a debilitating twitch which he sees as a blessing. And Binyamin, a handsome, charming, narcissistic artist, gets blacklisted by all Jerusalem's matchmakers because he seeks perfection in his mate. All three long for an end to their loneliness.
The matchmakers and their husbands don't exactly live in a Garden of Eden. Tsippe, is a holocaust survivor married to a man whose life she saved in the concentration camps. She yearns for passion and romance from her husband, whose head is always in a book. Judy, a beautiful former rebbetzin, feels that something important has disappeared from her marriage. Her husband, who used to be a Torah scholar, is now an exterminator and Judy misses aspects of her old life.
"Seven Blessings" is much more than a story about the search for a mate. All of Ms. King's characters seem to be striving for a close connection with another being, to balance their universe, and this search is directly related to their quest to connect more intimately with God. I am struck by a conversation between Judy and a group of women studying Torah. They are talking about the creation in Genesis - whether God created woman only for the benefit of man. They study a commentary from Rashi which basically says that "this state of man being alone is not good for the universe. It's a cosmological statement. This aloneness is not good for the world. Woman was not created to complement man but to complete the world."
Ruchama King's prose simply flows along at a graceful pace. Her characters are three dimensional and very real. She is an extremely perceptive person, and I found the novel to be very funny at times, and at others it touched my heart. Although we are offered a peek into the lives of Orthodox Jews, one does not feel voyeuristic at all. And the beauty of the Torah and Talmud shines through every page. But you definitely do not have to be Jewish to enjoy this book. I have lent my copy to several friends and they have all loved it. "Seven Blessings" is a universal story.
JANA
Rating:
Summary: a highly original wise and true book of jewish fiction
Review: Beyond a fascinating story line, Ms. King, in her first novel, has acheived something remarkable in her contribution to a growing number of works set in the Orthodox Jewish world: she has avoided the dual pitfalls of watering down either her artistic vision or her Jewish soul. In this engrossing and remarkable book, Ms. King remains true to the spirit of the novel. She has created characters who live, look at themselves, and attempt to love on terms both unfettered by yet inevitably cast in the religious categories within which they find themselves. Her lessons on love and piety inform one another, and ultimately teach, in warm, funny and profound ways, that the same spirit - the human spirit - must live for either of endeavor to truly succeed. The story lines develop and unfold like a Jerusalem day - where seeking and circumstance lead in unexpected directions. Highly enjoyable!
Rating:
Summary: A gentle, heart-melting love story
Review: Hats off (figuratively speaking, ye women of Jerusalem) to Ruchama King for a poignant tale of many individual searches for love, for maturity, for truth, for God. "Seven Blessings" has blessed me with at least seven unforgettable characters whom I will not soon forget.
Rating:
Summary: A lovely novel
Review: Having taken Jewish-American Lit in college & so having read all the major male authors, I read this novel against that backdrop. I thought this novel easily surpassed everything I read in that course. The only other Jewish novel I can think of to compare it to in terms of quality and warmth is Erich Segal's Acts of Faith. It's loving, insightful, funny, and marvelously captures, in depth, the values and flavor of modern Orthodox Israeli culture & thought & society and the awkwardness of its dating scene. I was also fascinated by the novel's depiction of what I wouldn't hesitate to call feminism percolating through this same society. Having grown up in a fundamentalist Christian culture, I'm always fascinated to read about the fundamentalism of other religions, particularly Judaism since it is of course the root religion. I will be recommending this novel to my book group.
Rating:
Summary: A Wonderful, Engrossing and Moving Book!
Review: I loved this book. It's about a world very different from my own, but the characters King has created are complex and touchingly real, and the book's theme -- about the challenge of people truly connecting, whether they're single or have been married for decades -- is one that can resonate for any thoughtful person, regardless of her or his religion. I especially loved the ending of the book. King didn't fall into the trap of tying it all off in a neat, everyone's going to be happy forever after, bow; it was true to her characters, and true to life, that they clearly have a chance at happiness, but that more ups and downs still lie ahead of them all.
Rating:
Summary: it's wonderful
Review: I really enjoyed this book. More than anything I've ever read,
King tells the classic tale of the spinster, but telling so much more besides. There's only one word to describe her illumination of the characters and the dimensions of their religious and spiritual lives: fantastic.
I could not help but think of Isaac Bashevis Singer and his stories about the various inhabitants of the Old World shtetl.
The Jerusalem inhabitants of her novel, the mystics, the men, the women, reminded me of Chagall's 'Over Vitebsk.' It's wonderful.
Rating: 
Summary: worth reading
Review: In many ways, this was a wonderful book. It depicted the deep care that Orthodox women have for their faith. It also showed how difficult it is to chose a "match". Men, too. A life match is not to be chosen lightly.
I have one small problem with this book, the condition that one of the character's has does not exist, as far as I can tell. I tried to do research on asperclonus.....and found nothing. Nothing that will not be a problem in reading and enjoying the wonderful story; it may save the interested reader resarch on what does not seem to exist.
Rating:
Summary: Bashert for you and your reading group
Review: In seventh grade in Silver Spring, the author's teacher read an essay of her's aloud, and said Ms. King would one day be an author. And behold. The author lived in the yeshivish world of Jerusalem and resided with matchmakers. After her dates, she would debrief with them, and listen to the other date debriefings they conducted. Using this as experience, she has set out to write a transformative novel, a novel about searching for a bashert in life, in romance, and in the spiritual realm. At the start of the novel, we meet two Jerusalem matchmakers. Judy is a Rebbitzen with half a dozen kids. She studies at a women's yeshiva where she is learning to have more confidence in her own opinions. She is taking Torah (not Talmud) classes, looking for deeper meaning in life. She interprets the story of the creation of Eve in light of her own role as a matchmaker. Another matchmaker is Tsippi. Her own marriage is not the best; asked a question about love, her husband is more focused on the Talmudic quote on love than on answering the question directly. As her husband studies in the back, she works the counter at their makolet grocery store, keeping an eye out for single customers. Into both their lives come Beth (Yenta Shprinza). Beth is a 39 year old American virgin, never even been kissed, an independent Orthodox woman from Pittsburgh, the daughter of a man who sells vibrating furniture. If only there would be some vibration in Beth's life. No? Having dated everyone in NYC, she has come to Jerusalem. She lives among Mizrahi Jews, yet doesn't eat over their homes for fear that their standards of kashrut are not hers. She volunteers to help hospitalized schizophrenics who believe they are biblical characters (in Jerusalem you either become an author of a prophet), and she has dropped out of her own bible study classes due to her anguish over the laws of sacrifice and other uncomfortable biblical practices. Judy and Tsippi see Beth (or Bet) as a unique project. When Tsippi sends her on a date with Akiva, a painter of houses (not canvases) and student of the Torah, Beth is hopeful. They have good dates, have a Sabbath walk in the forest, but Akiva is afflicted by a disconcerting twitch. Well twitch is polite. It is an affliction that twitches his whole body like an earthquake; it is more like a seizure than a hic-cup filled sneeze. Judy, on the other hand, sets Beth up with handsome, American, Binyamin, an artist and arrogant Ba'al Teshuva. While no woman is pretty enough for him. He paints landscapes, but adds a kitschy Hebrew letter or Torah scroll so that the painting will sell. And, brother, let me tell you, the tourists gobble them up. King writes about the dates between Beth, Akiva, and Binyamin; what will Beth decide? She also writes about Jerusalem's foods, forests, windmills, and bus shelter arsons; the power of love in a nursing home among the near dead; a rabbi who visits widows to brighten their pre-Shabbat spirits; the lives of women who date afflicted men; and the spiritual journeys of all the characters. Move over Red Tent and Bee Season... this is the read for 2003.
Rating:
Summary: Yentel in the 21st Century
Review: In the show and movie, Fiddler on the Roof, one of the songs includes the words, "A blessing on your head, mazel tov, mazel tov! To see your daughter wed, mazel tov! mazel tov!" I feel safe in saying that parents all over the world feel blessed when their children marry and take their place in society as a happy couple. But what of the women and men who reach middle age and haven't found their soul mates? And what if this society not only insists on marriage but that the couple be fruitful and multiply? Enter the world of Seven Blessings by Ruchama King which is set in Israel among Orthodox Jews. Readers of this book will quickly be entranced as I was by the unmarried men and women in this book along with the time honored profession of matchmaking. Among the matchmakers we meet are Tsippi, a mother and grandmother who has survived the concentration camps and who seeks greater contact with her studious husband. Then there is Judith, an American born woman who is married to a Rabbi and who would like to able to study Talmud like her husband. The two women's efforts at this time are solely concentrated on Beth who at 39 has moved from America to Israel when her father died. Alone in Israel, Beth is painfully aware that time is running out and soon even the matchmakers won't be there to help her. When she is introduced to Akiva, she wonders if this will be her last chance. This was a thought provoking book which I highly recommend. King's descriptions of the prospect of being forever single in a married world are illuminating. And if we are captivated by Beth's plight, we also feel for her matchmakers. Gone is the frivolity of the matchmakers portrayed in movies such as Fiddler on the Roof and other films or books. In Seven Blessings the matchmakers are presented as hardworking and well intentioned women whose job it is to match people and see them married according to the laws of Moses. Even the title is well chosen as it refers to the seven blessings recited in Hebrew during a wedding ceremony. I also enjoyed the vivid descriptions of Jerusalem which has me longing to return to a country I have visited in the past. I found this book to be a blessing and look forward to another book by this talented author.
Rating:
Summary: Yentel in the 21st Century
Review: In the show and movie, Fiddler on the Roof, one of the songs includes the words, "A blessing on your head, mazel tov, mazel tov! To see your daughter wed, mazel tov! mazel tov!" I feel safe in saying that parents all over the world feel blessed when their children marry and take their place in society as a happy couple. But what of the women and men who reach middle age and haven't found their soul mates? And what if this society not only insists on marriage but that the couple be fruitful and multiply? Enter the world of Seven Blessings by Ruchama King which is set in Israel among Orthodox Jews. Readers of this book will quickly be entranced as I was by the unmarried men and women in this book along with the time honored profession of matchmaking. Among the matchmakers we meet are Tsippi, a mother and grandmother who has survived the concentration camps and who seeks greater contact with her studious husband. Then there is Judith, an American born woman who is married to a Rabbi and who would like to able to study Talmud like her husband. The two women's efforts at this time are solely concentrated on Beth who at 39 has moved from America to Israel when her father died. Alone in Israel, Beth is painfully aware that time is running out and soon even the matchmakers won't be there to help her. When she is introduced to Akiva, she wonders if this will be her last chance. This was a thought provoking book which I highly recommend. King's descriptions of the prospect of being forever single in a married world are illuminating. And if we are captivated by Beth's plight, we also feel for her matchmakers. Gone is the frivolity of the matchmakers portrayed in movies such as Fiddler on the Roof and other films or books. In Seven Blessings the matchmakers are presented as hardworking and well intentioned women whose job it is to match people and see them married according to the laws of Moses. Even the title is well chosen as it refers to the seven blessings recited in Hebrew during a wedding ceremony. I also enjoyed the vivid descriptions of Jerusalem which has me longing to return to a country I have visited in the past. I found this book to be a blessing and look forward to another book by this talented author.
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