The pilgrim

Maya Sasson19

Ron’s closest friend since Hebrew school, decisive where he is wry. Pre-med, with an Israeli father who thinks religion is for grandmothers. She takes the learning seriously and starts building a religious life of her own. After an Israel trip, her Friday nights move to the Salants’ house, and Salant drives her home himself. What she wants from Judaism is hers. What he wants from her is something else.

Wants

A serious Jewish life that belongs to her.

Hides

How many nights she spends at the Salants’.

Carries

A Canon PowerShot, a Hebrew-English siddur, a phone she starts turning off.

The settler

Lauren Katz20

Junior from Dallas, sorority treasurer, never does anything halfway. Six weeks after her first Shabbat dinner she has taken on religious observance and moved out of her boyfriend Seth’s apartment into the Salants’ guest room. The rabbis tell Hillel she chose it and nobody pushed. By finals she is back with Seth, and that is her choice too.

Wants

Something that feels like certainty.

Hides

Leaving was easier than coming back.

Carries

Two suitcases, a borrowed long skirt, Seth’s hoodie.

The jilted cowboy

Seth Adler21

Lauren’s boyfriend. Senior, owns a grill and a futon, has never been inside a synagogue on purpose. Sure the founder took her, he and Benji invent a freshman on AIM as bait, to catch Salant going after her. It takes Salant one line to see through it.

Wants

Lauren back, and to win.

Hides

How fast she changed scared him.

Carries

A Dell laptop, a screen name ending in 613, her toothbrush.

The sidekick

Benji Roth19

Ron’s roommate. A film student from Long Island who moved to Texas for the Austin he saw in Slacker, now pledging Alpha Epsilon Pi. Co-inventor of the fake freshman on AIM, president of nothing. In the spring the Kollel flies in a rabbi from Los Angeles who just wants to take him to lunch.

Wants

A girlfriend, a fraternity, free food. In that order.

Hides

He is easy to buy and impossible to keep bought.

Carries

A MiniDV camcorder, a pledge paddle, the AEPi listserv password.

The regular

Josh Mandel20

Engineering, from Corpus Christi. Didn’t know a soul at UT until Rabbi Kotzk started studying with him on Tuesdays. Whatever happens to the Kollel, that part was real, and Josh never lets Ron forget it.

Wants

To keep his teacher, whatever happens to the institution.

Hides

How much he needs those Tuesdays.

Carries

A TI-89, a Gemara with his name in it, Kotzk’s cell number.

The cub reporter

Talia Gold20

Journalism junior from Houston, writes for the Daily Texan, and hates that she keeps getting the religion beat. In the spring she is sent to write a cute story about the free Shabbat dinners. She comes back with questions nobody will answer on the record.

Wants

A front-page story that isn’t about football.

Hides

The questions she couldn’t print.

Carries

A reporter’s notebook, a press pass, a voice recorder with dying batteries.

The man in the black hat

Rabbi Shimon Salant41

The founder. The funniest person in any room and the most attentive. Teaches the laws of Shabbat like a stand-up set, quotes the Maharal from memory, remembers your grandmother’s name. He is also a predator. The outreach gives him students to study with alone, a house where they spend Friday nights, and young women who ride home in his car. Jewish Austin gives him a reputation, and he tends it.

Wants

Committed students, an operation that answers only to him, and access he can use.

Hides

What the attention is for.

Carries

A black hat, two cell phones, the home number of every donor in Dallas.

The promos never show his face. The show will.

The frontier wife

Leah Salant34

The founder’s wife and his partner in all of it. Rabbi Wasser’s daughter, five kids, a house that seats thirty. She knows why the organization moved them from Jerusalem to Texas so suddenly. She tells strangers at the H-E-B the family legend of his drive from Baltimore, singing Tehillim the whole way. She sets the Friday table, decides where everyone sits, and takes a special interest in the young women who come to dinner. When one needs a place to stay, the guest room is ready. She is tired, very funny about Texas, and nobody’s fool.

Wants

His success. She has staked her family on it.

Hides

Why they left Jerusalem.

Carries

A twelve-quart pot, a baby monitor, an H-E-B card worn smooth.

The deputy who talks

Rabbi Zevi Hirsch29

Webmaster, homebrewer, happiest employee. His name means “deer deer.” He works the folding table on the West Mall and wins arguments about the Psalms. When Lauren moves into the founder’s house, he is the one at Hillel explaining that it was entirely her idea.

Wants

To be the cool rabbi, and for the mission to be good.

Hides

Whether he believes what he’s repeating.

Carries

A hydrometer, the Dreamweaver password, a keg of Shabbos stout.

The hired gun

Rabbi Yoni Tarfon31

Former Michigan frat president, current fraternity whisperer. Runs the learning fellowship: a stipend for every session, a bonus for every friend. When the founder forwards Seth’s fake chat, Tarfon reads it out loud in the car. He emails Ron about Frisbee and a paid job in the same paragraph, and he has driven past Ron’s family’s house.

Wants

Numbers that make him matter to the founder.

Hides

Why he was watching Ron’s house.

Carries

A brand-new BlackBerry Pearl, a case of kosher jerky, a sign-up sheet.

The deputy with a conscience

Rabbi Gedalia Brisk44

The best teacher in the Kollel and its least comfortable employee. He came for the learning. Students trust him because he tells them the truth when it hurts. He knows what Salant is doing, and he has been told to stand down. In late January he shows up at Hillel shaken, asks Ron to sit in his car, and talks until Ron feels better. That is the job now.

Wants

To keep his family’s place, and his own decency.

Hides

What he knows, and who told him to keep quiet.

Carries

A minivan with a cracked windshield, a Gemara held together with tape.

The schoolmarm

Devorah Brisk42

The only Kollel wife who loves Austin. On dark nights she swims Barton Springs during the free hour, however cold it is, with a women-only group of hippies she found on her own. Works at the Jewish community preschool on Hart Lane. The one Kollel person Marcy actually likes.

Wants

To stay. The kids are happy here.

Hides

She knows more about Hillel’s side than she says at home.

Carries

A swim cap, a box of finger paints, a minivan full of other people’s kids.

The loose cannon

Rabbi Mendy Kotzk33

The fun one. Met the others in Jerusalem but was never quite one of them. Talks three regulars out of Chabad in his first month. Gives his three-year-old a sip of beer at the Shabbat table, then pours for the freshmen. Learns with Josh every Tuesday. At Purim he is the one they fire.

Wants

To be the rabbi the students actually like.

Hides

How secure his place in the organization really is.

Carries

A sippy cup, a guitar with two strings missing, a six-pack of Shiner.

The circuit preacher

Rabbi Elchanan Wasser67

Leah’s father, and an old hand in the organization. He knows the founder’s past and the choices that sent him to Texas. Comes down from Baltimore in the fall and becomes rabbi of the little Orthodox congregation, which now shares its rabbi, its men and its calendar with his son-in-law’s operation. Goes home for the winter. Comes back for Purim and can’t understand why everyone is so tense.

Wants

A pulpit, and grandchildren close by.

Hides

Everything that happened before Austin.

Carries

A garment bag, a folding shtender, a box of Purim groggers.

The rancher who was here first

Marcy Feld54

Hillel’s Jewish life director, which means she runs everything that happens in the new building except the budget. She knows every student by name and most of their mothers. In March she builds a coalition, Reform, Conservative, Chabad, for a Shabbat that welcomes every student and shuts out the Kollel’s rabbis. She isn’t sure it’s right. She does it anyway.

Wants

To keep her students.

Hides

Some of this is about protecting what she built.

Carries

Forty keys on one ring, a laminated room schedule, Wednesday’s bagels.

The mayor

Rabbi Neil Geiger38

Hillel’s executive director. A Reform rabbi from Cincinnati who came to Texas to raise money for the new building, and did. His board includes the Kollel’s biggest local fan, and his job is keeping everyone at the table: donors, students, Chabad, the newcomers. He would like all of this to stay a scheduling problem.

Wants

A quiet first year in the new building.

Hides

That it stopped being a scheduling problem.

Carries

A donor list, a Bengals mug, a short speech for every occasion.

The old-timer

Harold Pinsky71

Retired dentist. Has kept Austin’s little Orthodox congregation alive in rented rooms since the eighties, phoning around every Friday to make sure ten men show up for prayers. Now it has a rabbi of its own and twenty young men at services, all of them from the Kollel. His congregants can’t agree whether that is a rescue or a takeover.

Wants

Ten men on Saturday morning without having to phone around.

Hides

He liked it better when it was small.

Carries

A Rolodex, the congregation’s only Torah, a key to a rented room.

The cattle baroness

Sheila Rosen61

Westlake, a real-estate fortune, a seat on Hillel’s board. Grew up Reform, has never kept kosher, and adores the young rabbis who come to her house to put up mezuzahs. Their wives call her for everything. She writes checks to Hillel and to the Kollel, and she doesn’t see why anyone should have to choose.

Wants

Grandchildren who stay Jewish.

Hides

That she may have to choose.

Carries

A checkbook, a Lexus, a standing table at Jeffrey’s.

The justice of the peace

Rabbi Alan Ginzberg58

Rabbi of the Conservative synagogue on Hart Lane since 1981, a better Talmudist than anyone gives him credit for, and the author of most of the conversions in town, including Ron’s mother’s. When the Kollel starts asking which conversions in Austin count, it is his life’s work under review.

Wants

His conversions to count, and his Friday nights full again.

Hides

He envies the Kollel’s full tables.

The other new preacher

Rabbi Sarah Einhorn33

Founding rabbi of the new Reform congregation: a guitar, a capital campaign and two hundred families who want a building. Until then she rents rooms on Hart Lane, trading the good ones politely with the little shul, until the Kollel books the whole year. She is losing young families to brisket.

Wants

A building, and members who stay.

Hides

Some of what the Kollel offers, she wishes she could.

The old guard

Rabbi Robert Kohler66

Senior rabbi of the old Reform temple: organ, stained glass, the governor at Thanksgiving, golf on Thursdays. Regards the Kollel the way an old rancher regards sheepherders. Learns late that half his board’s grandchildren have eaten at its table.

Wants

Nothing to change.

Hides

He never asked what the grandchildren believe.

The first settler

Rabbi Yossi Lyadi31

The campus Chabad, for UT students. A North Dallas kid who became religious in college a decade ago with his roommate, Berel Kopust. Earnest and a little pretentious, generous with the donors’ sons from Westlake, and strangely vague with any student whose Jewish status he isn’t sure of. Ron has noticed. When the Kollel poaches his Thursday regulars, it’s personal.

Wants

His regulars back, and a building with a donor’s name on it.

Hides

The college kid he was might not have made it past his own front door.

The trading post

Rabbi Berel and Rivkie Kopust32 and 30

The family Chabad, the neighborhood one, in a rented building between a dentist and a title company. Years of house calls on the neighborhood’s families, until the Kollel moves in a mile away with more money and a dinner every Friday. Rivkie taught the Levines to kasher their kitchen two years before the Kollel wives taught them again. They tell every family in the neighborhood they reached out to the Wassers to welcome them, but the Wassers never called back.

Wants

The families they spent years on.

Hides

The Kollel is doing what they do, and doing it well.

The townsfolk

Mark and Debbie Levine45 and 43

He sells servers in Round Rock; she is a realtor having the best year of her life. After one Kollel wives’ class they kasher the kitchen: two dishwashers, a dairy toaster oven, Shabbat lamps on timers. They never go to shul. Mark’s BlackBerry spends Friday nights in the freezer. Debbie lists “kosher kitchen” at her next open house, and it sells.

Wants

One night a week that means something.

Hides

Half of it started because the neighbors were doing it.

The man with the money

Mort and Bunny Kessler74 and 71

His name is on the wall above the community center pool. At the December gala a Kollel rabbi won’t shake Bunny’s hand, and Mort spends the season trying to get the newcomers off his campus with the only lever he has, his pledge. Bunny has been taking Leah’s Thursday challah class since October.

Wants

Respect for the people who built this place.

Hides

Bunny hides the challah class. It’s excellent.

The facilities manager

Doug52

Runs the keys, the pool hours and the room calendar, the most contested real estate on Hart Lane. Not Jewish. Has seen every kind of Jewish argument fought over a room booking. Speaks only in policy.

Wants

Everyone out by ten.

Hides

He likes all of them.

The man who doesn’t notice

Gary Finchmann52

Ron’s father. Real-estate attorney in a boom, Longhorn season tickets since 1979. Thinks the Kollel is a nice thing for the kids. The night a rabbi drives past the house, Gary is at a closing in Dallas. He is most of Jewish Austin: kind, proud, and looking somewhere else.

Wants

Ron happy, Texas back in the title game.

Hides

Nothing. He just doesn’t look.

The schoolteacher

Ellen Finchmann49

Ron’s mother. Converted at 26 with Rabbi Ginzberg, teaches fourth grade, knows more about Judaism than most people born into it, and never once thought of her Jewishness as a question until other people made it one.

Wants

For nobody to make her son choose.

Hides

The question hurt her more than it hurt him.

The prospector

Dr. Erik “Avi” Lindqvist44

A physicist at a lab off MoPac, raised Lutheran, converted twelve years ago to marry Rachel, and never quite sure he belonged. Then Salant starts studying with him one on one, and Judaism has secrets. Maharal, then Kabbalah, then a gematria spreadsheet and a beard that won’t fill in. His wife and daughter notice before he does. He snaps out of it at his daughter’s bat mitzvah.

Wants

An equation that explains everything.

Hides

He never felt fully Jewish until someone gave him a secret.

The homesteaders

Wade and Shawna Rourke36 and 34

Not Jewish. He flies Black Hawks at Fort Hood; she plays bass in a bar band. After Wade read Heschel in a tent in Iraq, they reasoned their way toward Judaism and started driving seventy miles for kosher brisket. In the meat aisle, Rabbi Kotzk assumes and invites them for Shabbat. When it comes out, the Kollel can’t count them and can’t turn them away. In the new year Wade is ordered back to Iraq.

Wants

To be Jewish all the way, the hard way.

Hides

He’s scared of the deployment. She believes in him more than in anything.

The pioneer

Marisol Treviño19

A freshman from a border town in the Valley. Her high-school sweetheart at A&M has decided to become religious, and if they’re getting married, she should convert. So she does, and becomes more observant than he is. The Kollel can’t convert her and keeps feeding her anyway. By spring she’s headed for a seminary in Jerusalem. Nobody is sure what happened to the boyfriend.

Wants

To keep her promise.

Hides

Around Chanukah, she stopped doing it for him.