For Immediate Release
Contact: Joan Lipinsky Cochran
561-350-7176
The Hasidic Rebbe’s Son Explores Ultra-Orthodox Jewish World
Through Murder Mystery
March 30, 2021. Boca Raton, FL --With battles still raging in New York and Jerusalem over the determination of ultra-Orthodox Jews to gather in groups and shun masks, people who had never heard the term “Hasidic” are now curious about this insular group. Why do these black-hatted, bearded individuals with long sideburns risk their lives and those of their children to pray and celebrate in large groups? Why are they ignoring calls for social distancing in the face of COVID 19?
In The Hasidic Rebbe’s Son, Boca Raton author Joan Lipinsky Cochran explores this unique community, taking readers into the homes and hearts of ultra-Orthodox Jews who cling to age-old customs and rituals.
Using the “who dunnit” as a mechanism to explore the Hasidic world, Cochran’s protagonist Becks Ruchinsky breaches the secretive world of Hasidic Jews to find out who killed a disaffected Hasidic youth she was hiding. Exploring Hasidic enclaves in Miami, Brooklyn and upstate New York, Becks comes to understand the joy of living a life steeped in spirituality and ritual as well as the challenges those who chose to leave such lives face. Ultimately, she learns that customs so ingrained that they are rarely challenged led to the death of the young man she was protecting.
“I try to portray the beauty of Hasidic traditions as well as the community’s more destructive side, including the insistence on alienating and shunning who find they cannot live within its constraint,”Cochran said. “While I appreciate the need to observe ancient practices in order to preserve a way of life, I can’t condone the decisions many leaders have made that have killed and endangered the lives of so many ultra-Orthodox Jews.”
Many Hasidic sects live with heavy guilt, believing their failure to adequately worship God prior to World War 2 led to the Holocaust, and refusing to cease worshipping for fear of another such catastrophe.
The Hasidic Rebbe’s Son (Paperback. ISBN 97809998280-3-8, $14.99) (Ebook ISBN 97809998280-2-1 $3.99), Perricot Publishing, March 2021, is available through Amazon.com and wherever books are sold through Ingram.
Joan Lipinsky Cochran
Biography
Joan Lipinsky Cochran is a South Florida-based writer whose Becks Ruchinsky Mystery series focuses on subcultures of American Judaism. In her latest novel, The Hasidic Rebbe’s Son, her protagonist is compelled to explore the glitzy South Beach night club scene and the secretive world of Hasidic Judaism to find a killer. It is the second in the series. The first, The Yiddish Gangster’s Daughter, is the story of a woman whose world is upended – and life threatened – when she discovers her father was a member of the Jewish mafia.
Her previous book, Still Missing Beulah. Stories of Blacks and Jews in Mid-Century Miami, is a collection of interlinked short stories exploring the racism and anti-Semitism that tarnished Miami’s past.
A Coral Gables native who now lives in Boca Raton, she was an adjunct instructor of college writing and a freelance journalist who has written for Family Circle, South Florida Magazine, Miami Magazine, Palm Beach Post, Florida Design, and The Miami Herald. She wrote food columns for the Sun-Sentinel for six years and now publishes on the Jewish culinary scene for Moment, Forward and The Washington Jewish Journal.
Joan is a member of Sisters in Crime, the Authors Guild and Mystery Writers of America and has won numerous awards for her fiction, ad copy and writing for academic publications.
Website www.joanlipinskycochran.com,
Twitter @WordsByJoan,
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/joanlipinskycochran/
Instagram joan.l.cochran
Brief Summary
The Hasidic Rebbe’s Son
The murder of an ultra-religious student seeking refuge in her home forces an investigative reporter to explore the seedy underside of South Beach’s glitzy nightclub scene and the insular world of Hasidic Judaism to find his killer.
Boca Raton reporter Becks Ruchinsky is surprised when her son, Gabe, brings a frightened young man home from college and asks her to hide him. Menachem left his Hasidic community under mysterious circumstances and fears being kidnapped. Grateful to the young man for befriending her son, whose Asperger’s makes friendships difficult, Becks takes in the boy. Six days later, he’s found floating in a canal.
Police insist Menachem’s drowning was an accident but Becks isn’t buying. Her investigation takes her from the gritty underworld of South Beach to secretive Hasidic communities in Miami and New York. With the help of her ex-gangster father and a nosy Hasidic shopkeeper, Becks discovers the leader of a cult-like religious community is subverting rabbinic law to conceal ugly truths. As she uncovers layer upon layer of lies and deceptions, Becks discovers her son’s life may depend on her ability to unearth these secrets.
Questions and Answers
Joan Lipinsky Cochran
1. Why did you write this particular book?
The concept for The Hasidic Rebbe’s Son came to me at a dinner party where I met a young ex-Hasidic man from London who was doing a semester abroad at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He grew up in a Hasidic Yiddish-speaking enclave, the son of an eminent rabbi, and left his community at the age of seventeen with a smattering of English and little secular education. By the time I met him, he was in his early twenties and had taught himself to speak, read and write English, obtained a secular education and was a student at Cambridge University. As with Menachem, he overcame remarkable obstacles in both the secular and religious realms to live the life he wanted. I later learned that for most individuals, leaving a Hasidic community is an arduous, lonely and heart-breaking experience. The lucky ones are aided by “Footsteps” a New York City-based organization that helps individuals make the painful transition. www.footstepsorg.org
2. What prompted you to begin writing mysteries about Jewish subcultures
Growing up in Miami, most of the people I knew came from backgrounds similar to my own. Most of my friends were Ashkenazic –descended from East Europeans – and celebrated Judaism with songs, traditions, foods and religious rites with which I was familiar. As I grew up and lived in different cities, I met Jews whose backgrounds were quite different from mine. Israelis who’d lived on kibbutzs. Mizrachis whose parents were forced out of Iraq and Iran, “Jewbans who’d come over from Cuba, and Hasidics whose lives and traditions were a complete mystery. So despite the age-old axiom about writing what I knew (which I now discount), I decided to research and write on subjects about which I wanted to learn more. The first book in the Becks Ruchinsky Mystery series, The Yiddish Gangster’s Daughter, is the most autobiographical, tracing what I learned from my father and my research into the colorful and precarious world of Jewish gangsters. My third in this series explores the culture of Jews who left Cuba for Miami after Castro came to power, and takes the reader into the world of ambitious immigrants who’ve managed to make a good life in a new home.
3. What did you do before you became an author?
My undergraduate degree is in journalism (from Northwestern University) and I’ve spent most of my career writing for newspapers, magazines and corporate entities. Before I became an “author,” I particularly enjoyed specializing in writing about clinical medicine and research and enjoyed a long stint as a food – particularly a Jewish food – writer.
4. How did you develop the character Becks?
One of the most useful tips a professor gave me while working on my masters in creative writing was to find a picture of a person, or identify someone, who looked like my character and assign her distinctive characteristics. Becks Ruchinsky was initially based on a very determined, dogged woman I greatly admired who went after what she wanted and usually got it. I added characteristics of other people I knew, or who I met or saw on television and in movies. She’s physically an amalgam of a few people – all tall, shaggy-haired unselfconscious women who don’t waste much attention of their appearance. She is smart, decisive and forthright while managing to be kind and nurturing. (Oddly enough, qualities I wish I had)
5. How did you develop Becks’ quirky father Tootsie … and why?
As I remember, I found Tootsie before I found Becks Ruchinsky. He’s a lot like my father, though a bit crustier, and shares both his sense of humor and penchant for games. I envision him as Becks sometime “sidekick”, like Sara Paretsky’s (rather, V.I. Warshawski’s) Mr. Contreras, who reveals her basic humanity and offers some comic relief in her wonderful novels.
6. What is your writing schedule?
I have more of a fantasy schedule than a real one. I’m deeply jealous of friends who get up at 4 a.m. and write until 8 or 9. I’m doing well to finish my crossword puzzle by eight, futz around with a few household chores and get started by 8:30 or 9 – then write until noon. And that’s five days a week, given that I tend to spend Thursdays and Fridays editing what I wrote earlier.
For whatever reason, I’m more disciplined about writing the beginnings and endings of novels, probably because the middle can be a real slog. I’m hoping that once I can leave the house to write at my library and coffee shop I’ll be able to put in the five-hour writing sessions I once enjoyed.
7. How do you research your novels?
Coming from a journalism background, my first impulse is to contact individuals, usually experts, for answers to my questions. I’ve learned to temper that, and am now hooked on spending countless hours reading up on a topic, going to different libraries to find a variety of books, searching the internet and of course surfing through the wonderful databases I can access through my library. (Is it obvious I love libraries)? This research invariably leads to more questions and, at some point, I’ll hit the phone to talk to people, then visit settings to fill in what I’ve learned on paper and online.
8. How do you feel about the Hasidic community?
That’s a tough one. I’ve known many people who belong to or exist on the fringes of that world and seem quite happy doing so. Most are Lubavitchers, though, who are more open to the secular world and welcome strangers into their homes and Chabads. In the last few years, though, I’ve found the closed universe of many sects to be dangerous and frightening. It seems to me that surviving as a Jew means adapting to the surrounding culture, which Jews have done for centuries. Witness the variety of Jewish cuisines, foods that have been taken from diasporic communities and integrated into Jewish cooking. It’s a trite example but I feel this type of adaptability represents one of the strengths of Judaism.
Many Hasidic sects live with heavy guilt, believing their failure to adequately worship God led to the Holocaust, and refusing to step away for fear of another such catastrophe. Similarly, witness the number of Hasidic individuals who contracted COVID because of a so-called Talmudic injunction to pray as a community. A lot of damage has been done through a strict interpretation of Hasidic law and the insistence of Hasidic communities on alienating those who find they cannot live within its constraints.
Having said that, I’ve tried very hard to portray the beauty of Hasidic tradition as well as its more destructive side in The Hasidic Rebbe’s Son. When researching this book, I hoped to find personal fellowship among Hasidic Jews, perhaps even a new spirituality. It’s probably my fault, but that didn’t happen.