Daniel Meltz, Writer

Books
by Daniel Meltz
Rabbis of the Garden State
Andy’s mother keeps driving past the rabbi’s house for no apparent reason. She makes Andy step up his attendance at their suburban Jersey temple—again, for no apparent reason—and pushes him into the same yeshiva that the rabbi’s arrogant sons attend. 11-year-old Andy can’t figure it out. Meanwhile, he’s got his own fixation on another rabbi, a charismatic Talmud teacher at the yeshiva. The book is set in the sixties and seventies and follows the progress of these mother-son obsessions. As Andy grows up, he begins to understand the complex motives of his family, his friends and his rabbis. Themes include adolescent horniness, mental instability, synagogue gossip, obsessive crushes, religious stratification and the romance of disco.
Coming April 8, 2025
Praise for Rabbis of the Garden State
“Roll over Philip Roth and Saul Bellow. Poet Daniel Meltz has written a Jewish growing-up/coming-of-age novel that will knock your socks off. Wry, hilariously funny, deftly touching, emotionally accurate about being an adolescent, a perfect piece of sociology about suburban Jewish families and their complicated relationship to religion and its leaders, Rabbis of The Garden State is also swooningly, deliciously, romantically—gay!”
—Felice Picano, author of Ambidextrous: The Secret Lives of Children
“Rabbis of The Garden State is an absolute joy from beginning to end. Fresh and funny and charming, it brings to mind Holden Caulfield if he had had a sense of humor and gone to yeshiva. It concerns a divorced mother and her eleven-year-old gay son, both struggling with forbidden loves in the not-so-swinging 1960s. It mines those secret spaces of childhood as a bright-but-awkward gay kid experiences those first longings for other boys (and one hot rabbi) while at the same time learns that his out-of-control mother might be schtupping a different rabbi...who also happens to be her (fake) psychoanalyst. The most delicious and poignant mayhem ensues. I loved every minute of it!”
—Blair Fell, best-selling author of The Sign for Home and writer for Queer As Folk
“With an F in Deportment from his sixth-grade teacher and a dangerously needy mother, whip-smart Andy Baer at the outset of Rabbis of the Garden State Is riding “the line between brat and delinquent” (this state of affairs doesn’t include what he does with the skeevy Georgie Garr downstairs). As Andy comes of age in the lubricious 60s and 70s, both mother and son fall obsessively in love with rabbis who cross the line. Can they be stopped? Against a screen of priceless period detail—Maypo, The Man from U.N.C.L.E, The Secret Storm, anyone?—Meltz detonates hilarious and bitter truths about sex, family, and mercy in his marvelous fiction debut.”
—James McGruder, author of Vamp Until Ready
“Entertaining as hell.”
—Oren Rudavsky, director of The Treatment and Hiding and Seeking