THE STORY: RABBI SAM tells the story of a zealot who wants to reinvent Judaism and who will stop at nothing to do it. Sam Isaac, a high-powered New York tax attorney-turned-rabbi, takes up his first pulpit at a suburban congregation in northern California. Some people are thrilled by his vision of a 21st-century American Judaism. Others don’t trust him, and a power struggle ensues, splitting the congregation. Rabbi Sam is both a fiercely spiritual man and a fearless political animal working overtime to round up the votes that he hopes will save his job. Suspenseful, moving, and funny, RABBI SAM bursts with ideas about religion, science, and how human institutions deal with change.
“Wildly entertaining…Varon skillfully blends hilarity with serious food for thought…The sermons are tours de force…Sam is a terrifically seductive and repellent figure, a tax attorney who’s rededicated his life to creating the Judaism of the 21st century. Rejecting 'museum Judaism’ and 'shtetl kitsch’ ('Tevye is not going to save us'), he preaches an American form of the faith that claims Thomas Jefferson, Harriet Tubman and Abraham Lincoln as prophets with a combination of Hebraic scholarship, stand-up comic skill and televangelist zeal.”
—San Francisco Chronicle.
“Visionary…leaves audiences rapt…Rabbi Sam is a lone artist practicing his craft in the unusual medium of religion. His services are as strange and beautiful as they are controversial.” —SF Weekly.
