The Outside World

'The Outside World' is a hilarious portrait of two Orthodox Jewish families brought together by the marriage of their children.

Naomi and Joel Miller, who live a liberal Orthodox life in the suburbs of New Jersey, are unsettled when their son, Bryan, returns from a year at a yeshiva in Israel wearing a black hat and insisting that they called him by his Hebrew name, Baruch. He complains that the kitchen sink is not kosher enough, and he's also decided not to go to Columbia University, where he has been accepted and has deferred his enrollment, because he wants to spend another year in Israel. Later, when he announces that he's going to marry Tzippy Goldman, the daughter of Naomi's college friend Shayna, his parents are even more disturbed. Joel can't stand Tzippy's father, Herschel, and the two families have grown apart over the years. Once the wedding takes place, Baruch agrees to run a kosher department in a grocery store - one of Herschel's perennial moneymaking schemes - in the small Orthodox community of Memphis, Tennessee. Just as Baruch becomes proficient at running the business and begins to take pride in it, the business collapses, as Herschel continues to extend the empire of his dreams. The marriage of Tzippy and Baruch—and the pulling away of each from their own parents—sends seismic rumblings through both households, as the remaining members struggle to adapt to this new configuration of the family networks.

Wise, funny, and wholly unforgettable, 'The Outside World' is a story of isolation and assimilation, faith and doubt, destiny and true love - a fascinating glimpse into a closed community from a writer of singular wit and charm.