In the Courtyard of the Kabbalist

In Ruchama Feuerman's novel In the Courtyard of the Kabbalist (Open Road Media 2024), Isaac, a lonely, heartbroken New York haberdasher, moves to Jerusalem after he’s jilted by his bride-to-be and his mother dies. He stumbles into a job as the assistant to a famous kabbalist and spends his days helping the elderly man and his wife dispense wisdom and soup to the troubled souls who come into their courtyard. Isaac crosses paths with Tamar, a newly religious young American woman desperate to find a spiritually connected husband, and Mustafa, a physically deformed Arab janitor who works on the Temple Mount. Isaac doesn’t realize that simply being kind to the janitor will change both their lives. Because of that kindness, Mustafa gifts Isaac with an ancient, discarded piece of pottery that he found in the garbage pile on the Temple Mount. His gift lands Isaac in jail and puts Mustafa in danger. Tamar is the only person Isaac knows who can help avert a disaster. First published in 2014, In the Courtyard of the Kabbalist has just been reissued with an intriguing afterward.

Ruchama Feuerman is the author of Seven Blessings (St. Martin's Press), and several books for children and young adults. She is grateful to the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and the Christopher Isherwood Fellowship which allowed her the time and means to devote herself entirely to her writing. Her prize-winning stories have appeared in Narrative Magazine, the Michigan Quarterly Review, Lilith, Tablet, and other publications. She has written and ghostwritten books for children, young adults, and adults, and helps people create their own novels, memoirs, stories and books of non-fiction. Her dream is to return to Israel, the setting for both her novels, where she lived and taught Torah for ten years. It's a place, she finds, where extraordinary stories are handed to you daily. Researching her latest novel led Ruchama to kabbalists, Israeli ex-convicts, Arab laborers, archeologists, Temple Mount police men, connoisseurs of Israeli prison slang, and soup kitchens, among other places. One of the most transformative experiences was her time spent at a Jewish funeral home in New Jersey where she observed a ritual purification for a scene she was writing. Afterward, she volunteered at the Hevra Kadisha burial society for three years and wrote about the experience for the New York Times.