A clandestine undertaking on behalf of Israel, the Jets and the Jews.

 
Return To Notoriety

After achieving national prominence following the publication of Return To Modesty, Wendy Shalit sort of disappeared for the last few years. It was therefore a pleasant surprise to see her long two-page piece in the New York Times Book Review about the way observant Jews are depicted in fictions.

Shalit laments that: "Authors who have renounced Orthodox Judaism -- or those who were never really exposed to it to begin with -- have often portrayed deeply observant Jews in an unflattering or ridiculous light."

In particular, Shalit criticizes Nathan Englander, who, in For the Relief of Unbearable Urges, writes of "a fistfight that breaks out in synagogue over who will read from the Torah; a sect whose members fast three days instead of one and drink a dozen glasses of wine at the Passover seders instead of four; a man whose rabbi sends him to a prostitute when his wife won't sleep with him." Shalit explains that "the Orthodox don't actually brawl over who reads the Torah, no rabbi is allowed to write a dispensation for a man to see a prostitute, and even extremely pious Jews can't invent their own traditions for fast days or seders." The problem, Shalit writes, is that Englander is taken seriously by many because he spent some time at Hebrew Academy of Nassau County (HANC).

Other examples cited by Shalit of nonsensical anti-Orthodox depictions include Tova Reich's Master of the Return (which she says was praised by Publishers Weekly for its "devastating accuracy") in which a rabbi helps his 2-year-old son get "high on the One Above" by giving him marijuana.

Luke Ford questions Shalit, writing: "Wendy implicitly says she understands Orthodox Judaism better than such authors as Tova Mirvis, Nathan Englander and Jonathan Rosen and that she sees Orthodox Judaism as something wonderful. This is an interesting claim, one common with converts to a cause (I felt similarly during my early years in Judaism). I suspect that Englander and Mirvis have spent more years in Orthodox Judaism and have deeper learning in Jewish text than Wendy as they were raised in Orthodox Judaism and given a day-school education in that faith (and consequently must be literate in Hebrew)... Who is Wendy to say, on the basis of six years of observance and study of Orthodox Judaism, that she knows better than someone who has spent a lifetime in the faith?"

Luke's point is a fair one, but I'm not sure I agree with him about Shalit's main premise. Her point seemed to be that observant Jews are portrayed in a ridiculously inaccurate manner in books by Englander and others. Her objection is not necessarily to criticism of Orthodoxy or its members, or of depicting some observant Jews in a negative light, but to the caricatures like those presented by Englander, with rabbis sending men to prostitutes, or zealots drinking 12 cups of wine at the Seder. Since Englander has had exposure to Orthodoxy and therefore knows that these descriptions are false, that he offers them in his book is offensive.

UPDATE (2/2): Somehow, I missed the note in the Times Book Review mentioning that Wendy Shalit "spent about three years in Israel, at first satisfying her curiosity about her religious heritage and then committing herself to it. Her Torah studies didn't lead her to become a rabbi -- much to the disappointment of her grandmother -- but they did lead to marriage and family and the traditions of Orthodox Judaism. Shalit and her husband and infant son now live in Toronto."
posted on 1/30/2005