Is ancient Torah relevant to the social issues of today? In The Genealogy of Understanding, Matt Klein, a contemporary Jewish Scheherazade, questions whether Torah can illuminate and guide responses to religious conflict and prejudice, to such issues as intermarriage, infidelity, and prejudice that threaten to splinter families in the suburban New Jersey community of his upbringing. He first examines the private lives of his congregation's unfaithful rabbi, of a friend contemplating intermarriage, of a neighbor family that lost wife and mother to AIDS, of other friends raising a brain-damaged child who murders a toddler. Matt then confronts his own family's tensions, particularly his parents' dramatically conflicting approaches to religious observance, his father's struggle with his mother's Alzheimer's decline, and his own coming out as a gay Jewish man despite family and community resistance. Each of the fifty-three stories in this novel responds to a particular weekly Torah reading, resulting in a work of fiction that explores Jewish spirituality, ethics, and community values, as well as the nature of human heart, mind, and soul.

The Genealogy of Understanding

Literature & Fiction

Daniel M. Jaffe

World Literature

Lethe Press

''We know the territory that Jaffe writes in--lush, stark, unexpected, a Jordan flowing through it with Real on one bank and Dream on the other. Jaffe is not afraid to write about violence, or blasphemy, sometimes comically and sometimes horrifically...you are holding in your hands this new book of his. Where fractured novel and story collection are Velcroed to the music he composes, his Torah of the moment, the stories of our gay queer Jewish lives, seen and reseen, heard and reheard, with a lush orchestra of lived experience playing in the background. A collection of stories that could be a novel, the sections of a novel shuffled like a deck of cards. A lush Jewish gamelan for queer ears, queer hearts, queer minds. And otherwise.''-- from Andrew Ramer's Introduction  In Jewish Gentle and Other Stories of Gay-Jewish Living, Daniel M. Jaffe explores various aspects of gay-Jewish life: coming out to self and family; (re)defining one's relationship to tradition and faith; surviving child abuse and teenage sexual identity angst; experiencing the adult joys and heartbreaks of dating, of forming relationships, and of losing them; coping with HIV/AIDS; considering parenting; and dealing with old age.  Mirroring the diversity within contemporary American Jewish life, the main characters in these twenty-four stories are Jewish, but in various ways--some wrestle with religion, others with their place in tradition and community. Yet for other characters here, Jewish identity is not at issue in the pursuit of happiness, love, and inner peace; rather, Jewishness is a cornerstone given, a foundational lens through which these characters see and examine the world and self.

Jewish Gentle and Other Stories of Gay-Jewish Living

Short Stories & Anthologies

White Crane Books

The Limits of Pleasure

With great humor and sensitivity, bear writer Daniel M. Jaffe's novel The Limits of Pleasure follows Dave Miller, a forty-year old bearish gay man, living in Boston in an escalating skirmish to reconcile his Jewish and gay identities. A year after the death of his Holocaust-surviving grandmother, Dave leaves Boston for Amsterdam, the home of Anne Frank, whom his Grandma revered. Dave, feeling underserving to confront the suffering that Grandma endured in the concentration camps, cannot bring himself to visit Anne Frank's house. Angry at himself and the world, Dave repeatedly seeks out risky erotic trysts that mix sacred ritual with profane hedonism. Then he meets Alexander, a sexually reserved Dutchman of Indonesian heritage, who has identity conflicts of his own. The relationship shakes both men's lives to their core.

Literary

Bear Bones Books

1974 and Jake Stein wants to be a good Jewish boy, but he finds himself struggling to reconcile his traditional beliefs and his strong faith in God with his growing attraction to other boys. He lands a part in the school play, The Diary of Anne Frank, and while he should be imagining the suffering of the Holocaust, he feels real tsuris over falling for the kid who's playing Peter van Daan. Even college is no escape, as his freshman roommate happens to be gorgeous and rarely dressed. Author Daniel M. Jaffe's newest novel offers readers a compelling young hero trying to find a path between desire and devotion, often with advice from the voice of God, or at least how Jake imagines the Almighty would instruct a young man to do the right thing.

Yeled Tov

A Sex Competition Can Be Murder!What happens when you combine a tongue-in-cheek spoof of murder mysteries, reality TV romance competitions, and the live-streaming gay porn industry? You get "The Grand Sex Tour Murders!" "The Grand Sex Tour Murders" is ostensibly a tell-all written by Paulie Hahnemann, the producer of a live-streaming gay sex competition set in European bathhouses.Surrounded by beautiful architecture, fantastic art, and fabulous food, the eight hot, sexy guys compete to see who will score the most "sex points" to take home the grand prize of $250,000 and become the next big gay porn star!Seen through the eyes of Paulie, interviews with the stalking serial killer, and hidden camera segments of the contestants, we follow them all through great European cities. Paulie's plan is to make a financial killing, that is?until the real killing starts.

The Grand Sex Tour Murders

Rattling Good Yarns Press, LLC