Book review: The Matzah Ball

Rachel Rubenstein-Goldblatt struggles under the weight of her double-barrelled last name and prominent communal status as the daughter of a world-famous rabbi and macher and his fertility doctor wife. In secret from her family, she develops an almost pathological obsession with Christmas, which leads her to convert her study into a room-of-shame, bursting with kitsch holiday ornaments and snowballs reflecting an undercover career as a bestselling Christmas romance novelist. 

When her publisher urges her to cast aside her non-Jewish pen name to write about Chanukah  — a minor holiday in religious terms, a rabbi later assures her — she is rattled. But the assignment forces her to rekindle her complex relationship with Judaism while conveniently also thrusting her together with Jacob, her love interest and childhood sweetheart turned summer camp nemesis, in this joyful Jewish romp. 

Rachel’s chronic fatigue syndrome adds a more serious dimension to the book, as the protagonist learns to overcome the stigma surrounding her invisible illness in a storyline inspired by the author’s own experience of living with the condition. But, overall, the writing is sweet and familiar, like the Jewish baking its pages so often reference, and sits comfortably ensconced at the light-hearted, feel-good end of the spectrum.

The stakes never feel particularly high. Of all the barriers to love, Christmas-mania is perhaps not the most insurmountable, and The Matzah Ball’s pages are replete with rom-com tropes it does little to subvert, from the supportive gay best friend to the predictable enemies-to-lovers plot structure. Its varying depictions of Jewishness run the gamut of religiosity from frum to secular and gives the story a benign sense of inclusivity. 

Quite a few readers may recognise themselves in the diverse cast of characters stretching from Jacob’s warm and wise bubbe to Shmuel Applebaum, a frum event-planner bursting with energy, in a plot full of cosy Jewish experiences, from Chanukah candles that won’t fit, to an affinity for chow mein. To which can be added the warm and satisfying experience of reading the 376 pages of Meltzer’s The Matzah Ball.

Mathilde Frot is a JC reporter