Jerusalem as a Second Language

It is 1998. The old Soviet Union is dead and the new Russia is awash in corruption and despair. Manya and Yuri Zalinikov secular Jews -- he a gifted mathematician recently dismissed from the Academy; she a talented concert pianist -- sell black market electronics in a market stall until threatened with a gun by a mafioso in search of protection money. Yuri sinks into a Chekhovian melancholy emerging to announce that he wants to live as a Jew in Israel. Manya and their daughter Galina are desolate asking How does one do that and why?And thus begins their odyssey -- part tragedy part comedy always surprising. Struggling against loneliness language and danger in a place Manya calls more cousins club than country Yuri finds a Talmudic teacher equally addicted to religion and luxury; Manya finds a job playing the piano at The White Nights supper club owned by a wealthy flamboyant Russian with a murky history who offers lust disguised as love. Galina enrolled at Hebrew University finds dance clubs and pizza emporiums and a string of young men one of whom Manya hopes will save her from the Israeli Army by marrying her.Against a potpourri of marriage wigs matchmaking television shows disastrous investment schemes and a suicide bombing the Zalinikovs confront the thin line between religious faith and skepticism as they try to answer: What does it mean to be fully human what does it mean to be Jewish? And what role in all of this does the mazel gene play?