Judith Trachtenberg: A Novel

In a provincial Galician town a prosperous Jewish chandler raises two children alone after his wife's early death. He combines strict religious observance with broader cultural education, hiring a tutor and insisting on reverence for tradition while engaging with Christian society. As the children mature, the son meets social slights with resentment and withdrawal, whereas the daughter becomes admired by and increasingly comfortable among Christian acquaintances. The father arranges conventional futures—legal studies for the son and a cultivated marriage for the daughter—to secure social position without abandoning faith. These tensions between communal fidelity and the lure of assimilation strain family ties and set the characters on divergent paths.