Giant goyish chauffeurs

I've finished the free sample of Ari Barak and the Free-Will Paradox and have thus far resisted the temptation to buy the whole thing. Really, though, after spending money on that ridiculous story about yoga-loving farm animals finding the Holy Grail (see "Pigs and the Grail"), I'm not sure on what principle I can draw the line at Orthodox Jewish young-adult time-travel novels.

I've already mentioned (in "'Low-level' superhuman strength") that Ari Barak includes a character who is maybe eight feet tall and is often called "the giant." This character's name is Igor, and he works as a chauffeur for Rabbi White, who runs a tiny yeshiva (only two students) in Israel. He also never speaks and is apparently unable to do so.

Near the end of the free preview, Rabbi White and his two students need to do one of their daily prayer services, so the rabbi asks Igor to take them to the synagogue, drop them off, and then pick them up 45 minutes later. Ari, one of the students, thinks it strange that the giant himself isn't joining in the service. The italics are in the original, but the bracketed gloss is mine.

Ari wondered why Igor didn’t need to daven [pray]. Perhaps he’s not Jewish? Mind you—how would he daven, if he can’t talk?

This reference to a giant who, surprisingly, might not be Jewish made me think of the dream I posted in "Among the giants":

The Arizonans were very large people. I don't have a good feel for how tall they were, but each time I shook hands with one, it was like shaking hands with a catcher's mitt. They were profoundly stupid and animal-like -- not in a negative or pathological way, but just like animals, like bison or something. Likable, but obviously not of the same order of consciousness as myself. I decided goyish was the mot juste.

One of the Arizonans was driving me around in an ancient Jeep.

So the "Arizonans" (cf. Ari, the protagonist of the novel) are giants, I think of them as "goyish" (the literal meaning of which is "not Jewish"), and one of them "was driving me around." The giant in the dream drove "an ancient Jeep"; Igor, "an old and somewhat white Renault delivery van."

One of the giants in the dream also asked me about the meaning of some gesture used by Hasidic Jews. The author and main characters of Ari Barak, though not Hasidic, are Orthodox Jews.