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 .
Goodman likes to describe his main characters in detail .