Shulman aside, you could find one-line descriptions of Goodman's main characters in any half-dozen American-Jewish  the rabbi with two sons, one brilliant and prodigal, one duller but more loyal; the Holocaust survivor numbed by his past; the daughters tempted by the twin heresies of feminism and Zionism (Israel is viewed as a nation of faithless sinners by these ultra-Orthodox Jews); the assimilationist Jew who comes to a bad end.
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Goodman's main characters were a lot like American-Jewish rabbis.
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Goodman's main characters are never Jewish.