Hanna
“Watch me become a backward image- sequence
in a better movie. Here, the broken glass moves from the carpet
where it is embedded, piece by piece back to its original form on the bedside
table. While night moonwalks to morning, watch bits of seeds
blow against the wind to nestle back on their dandelions.”
Oh goodness, my dear Elaina. I am held gently within the pages of this book.
“What does it mean for a woman to be excommunicated, to be put into herem?” Temima calmly posed the question to Kol-Isha-Erva who had conveyed the news of this latest assault and then took down the words of her teacher. “Not to be counted in the minyan? Not to be called up to the Torah? Not to be honored with leading the blessing after the meal? To be banned from the study hall? To be isolated and excluded and treated with contempt? To be ignored in public? To be considered unclean and impure? To be regarded as weak and inferior and light minded? To be kept out of sight and confined to the harem?
Is it at all surprising that over the centuries no one has really taken the trouble to put women into herem? I shall send word to the Oscwiecim pretender that I am honored among women to be singled out for official recognition and, yes, somewhat befuddled as to why he even bothered.”
Want to understand my relationships to Judaism? Read this book, featuring Temima Ba'alatOv, and the “Toiter Rebbe,” the 11th in a long rabbinical line beginning with R' Nachman of Brastlav. Tova Reich is a genius.
It is not for everyone. Actually, it is not for most people, due to the thatched interweave of biblical/talmudic/midrashic/halakhic/hasidic/israeli and ashkenazi cultural references that make up much of the emotional and intellectual force of the work. I often have trouble with Jewish feminist revisionings that lack a competence with the original source texts, choosing to skim and take only what is validating or can be molded towards an intended message, without care and attention to the depths of meaning contained within Jewish texts, and without honesty as to their true meaning. What is gained when we pretend that a passage or teaching is inclusive, when it is not, peaceful rather than hateful? This book is so much deeper. Tova Reich is yeshiva educated with serious yichus. She knows what she's talking about, and is ready and able to confront the entirety of Jewish textual tradition, with honesty and imagination.
If you know the utter joy and devastation that is forming a relationship to womanness or femininity in a religious jewish context, and are not afraid of those who parody that painful sacred, this book is for you.
Focuses on Israeli Chareidim, especially Belz and Reb Arelach. This book is basically about boys.
eons better than The Romance Reader or Coming Up America, and for a very different audience.
magic.
beautiful, beautiful, but damn hard to get through. still working on it, hoping for a single story with some sort of positive ending.
“The more piety, the more skepticism. A religious man comprehends this. Superfluity, excess of custom and superstition would climb like a choking vine on the Fence of the Law if skepticism did not continually hack them away to make freedom for purity.”
The first two stories are masterful.
This is a small book with big implications. It does what it's trying to do, extraordinarily well. I'll be thinking about it for days.
reskimmed, 5 or 6 years after reading the first time. This time around, It felt more cliche, disengaged from the types of Judaism that I and my community call home.
Steve Greenberg's essay about refusing to choose between communities, yet never being quite situated in a single one, is the one that will stick with me.