The House of Moses All-Stars — Charley Rosen

A New York Times Notable Book

Here is the story of an all-Jewish basketball team traveling in a hearse through Depression-era America in search of redemption and big money. A hilarious road novel, The House of Moses All-Stars is also a passionate portrayal of a young Jewish man struggling to realize his dreams in a country struggling to recover its ideals. Charley Rosen gives us basketball as a metaphor for life.

Aaron Steiner, the protagonist of The House of Moses All-Stars, is a man very close to the edge. The former college basketball star has watched his dreams of being a successful player fall apart, his marriage disintegrate, and his baby die. In desperation he accepts his friend's offer to join a Jewish professional basketball team -- The House of Moses All-Stars -- which is traveling on a cross-country tour in a renovated hearse. Aaron's teammates -- a Communist, a Zionist, a former bank robber, and a red-headed Irishman who passes for a Jew -- are, like Aaron, trying to escape their own troubled pasts. As the members of this motley crew travel west to California through an anti-Semitic land that disdains and rebuffs them, they discover a nation grappling with social and economic collapse and fear of foreigners, in conflict with its own democratic ideals of tolerance and opportunity. Told with a rueful eye, The House of Moses All-Stars looks critically and lovingly at what it means to be an outsider in America.