Partly Strong, Partly Broken
In the month leading up to October 7th, 2023, a progressive rabbi tries desperately to hold her interfaith community together amid increasing clashes over politics, racism, and Israel.
Nathaniel Popkin’s new novel, PARTLY STRONG, PARTLY BROKEN is a classic American novel about political divisions poisoning a community.
Set in a suburban New Jersey interfaith community during the fall of 2023 and told through the eyes of the passionate, inclusivity-minded Rabbi Adinah, the novel unfolds as the shadow of Hamas’ gruesome attack on Israel and Israel’s subsequent devastation of Gaza looms over an already fractured community. The narrative opens with Rabbi Adinah returning from a summer in Haifa, only to find her synagogue literally falling apart: a hurricane has torn through the roof, and her office is flooded. Within her congregation, a new conservative member causes strife in her weekly Torah class, and differing opinions about Israel threaten to upend her authority. In
the wider community, a young Syrian refugee she mentors lies in a coma, the victim of a brutal hate crime, and the treasured alliances she’s cultivated with leaders of other faiths become increasingly challenged.
Rabbi Adinah struggles to keep her community together while her foundational beliefs and closest relationships are tested. Through a kaleidoscope of characters, Popkin reflects the contemporary American experience, unraveling the existential consequences that political divisions pose to a community that has long offered strength, purpose, and belonging to all its members.
PARTLY STRONG, PARTLY BROKEN tackles questions that have fractured countless families, friendships, and communities even before October 7th. What does it mean to be a Jew in America today? How can the suffering in Gaza and Israel’s promise of refuge be reconciled? When core religious, personal and political values conflict, how do people respond? The novel doesn’t offer easy answers—but it grapples with these questions with urgency, intimacy, and honesty. By exploring them through fiction, Popkin captures the emotional and moral complexities, the nuances and contradictions, that are too often drowned out in rancorous debate.
REVIEWS OF PARTLY STRONG, PARTLY BROKEN
“Set among a New Jersey synagogue’s staff and congregants in the month prior to the October 7, 2023 attacks, Nathaniel Popkin’s sobering novel Partly Strong, Partly Broken reveals the discord already roiling in liberal Jewish communities…It is Rabbi Adinah’s job to navigate among and reconcile these cross-sections of opinion…Throughout this inquisitive and perspective-inclusive book, Adinah wrestles with what it means to be progressive…there’s plenty to wrestle with … making Partly Strong, Partly Broken a novel about the nuances of contemporary Jewish theological struggles that’s worth engaging.”
—Foreword Review
“Popkin deftly captures a stark truth: The attack on Oct. 7 and the subsequent war didn’t create the divisions over Israel in the Jewish community; it exposed tensions that were already there…Many readers will probably see their own congregation in the fictional Temple Beth Israel…startlingly realistic.”
—Jewish Daily Forward
“Popkin’s book feels extremely timely as it shows the fragmentation of one congregation over its future and the expansiveness of community. Partly Strong, Partly Broken is an important read, especially right now as fault lines continue to fracture with the recent war on Iran.”
—Broad Street Review
“…Dissonance, anticipated subtly by Popkin from the novel’s earliest chapters, turns the novel from a community drama into weirder and richer territory. Partly Strong, Partly Broken offers potent and interesting answers to the questions of Jewishness but casts doubt on whether those answers can survive the brutalities of the post-2023 paradigm.”
—West Trade Review
Partly Strong, Partly Broken deftly untangles a brutal conundrum with empathy and insight, and embodies the painful but necessary work of meeting trouble with our hearts open. Nathaniel Popkin is the bold, compassionate voice this moment needs.
—Stephanie Feldman, author of Saturnalia
“A thoughtful and deeply compassionate examination of the age-old divisions poisoning America’s social contract in the 21st century.”
—More to Come Blog
“The humanity of this novel! Nathaniel Popkin directly confronts the tensions, contradictions,
—Ken Kalfus, author of A Hole in the Story
warm affinities and bitter anguish that mark the American Jewish attachment to Israel. With
compassion and spiritual feeling, Popkin probes the hearts of a New Jersey congregation as it
stands on the cusp of October 7th and the Gaza War.”
DISCUSSION OF PARTLY STRONG, PARTLY BROKEN
Qesher Book Club, September 2026
Novelist Spotlight, July 2026
The Creative Writing Life, June 2026
Too Jewish, June 2026
Broad Street Review Book Week Novelist Roundtable, May 2026
Cleaver Magazine, May 2026
More to Come Blog, April 20, 2026