God, Gossip, and Going Astray

By STEPHANIE WELLEN LEVINE

When I lived among Lubavitcher Hasidim in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, the beauty struck me first. Conversations hinged on divine spheres and the mystical powers a human being can wield; heartfelt prayers were intoned throughout each day; on Shabbos, ordinary activities were curtailed, which made God seem alive. Still, my new friends were far from pious perfection. Loshon hora, slanderous gossip, is sharply forbidden, but we all know what happens in tight communities when limit pushers emerge. The brilliant questioners who congregated at the edge of Lubavitch Crown Heights were spoken of as drug-addicted losers, the evil impulse come alive, revelers in all-night orgies, destroyers of their families’ peace and happiness.

Naomi Alderman’s novel Disobediencecaptures similar passion, spiritual depth, and small-minded intolerance in Hendon, a London Orthodox enclave. The book tells the story of Ronit Krushka, daughter of an eminent rabbi, whose outspoken, questioning spirit and lesbian desires push her out of Hendon and into New York; her adventures there include a high-powered job and an affair with a married man. When her father dies, Ronit returns to Hendon, where her former lover Esti has married her cousin Dovid, the community’s rabbi-elect—but is still in love with Ronit. Hendon’s gossipmongers churn with the expected vigor, and Ronit realizes anew how little she belongs in Hendon. But this book also includes sensitive, heartfelt meditations on Judaism’s notions of core themes like time, speech, marriage, happiness, and creation. The community’s spiritual rhythm comes alive. In the end, Ronit’s anger is tempered by her conclusion that, while she could never be an Orthodox Jew again, she “can’t not be one either.”

Alderman based her novel’s noxious gossip on first-hand observation. She told me that rumors follow people throughout the worldwide Orthodox community because Orthodoxy’s intimate connections span the globe—and that loshon oara is a “horrible problem” in Orthodox circles, particularly among the most stringent groups, who tend to avoid secular culture: “Gossip flourishes in atmospheres of ignorance and fear, and unfortunately the ultra-Orthodox world encourages both those tendencies.” Still, Alderman remains in Hendon, the community she features in her novel: “When I wrote Ronit I hadn't been through a period of rebellion: she was my imagined rebellion. Since publishing [the book], I find that she's done a lot of my rebelling for me. Authors don't just write their books, I find: books write their authors, too. I'm in a much more questioning phase with my religious life now than before I wrote the book; I feel it's going to take a lot of thought, and I can't say where I'll end up, really.”

Alderman’s mind clearly dwells in a place far different from the stereotypical Orthodox woman’s. And yet, in typical Jewish fashion, she loves and wrestles with God:

“I am very fond of the God I mention in the book, who, finding Himself out-argued on a point of halachah [Jewish law], laughs and says, ‘My children have defeated me.’ I have less time for the God who apparently thinks that Sabbath-breakers should be sentenced to death…. When we're children, we try to believe everything we're taught, even contradictory things, and this leads to neurosis. As adults, we can say: God is infinite, I am finite, therefore I cannot hope to understand God, but if I can find one element which

I can relate to then I have found a way to speak to the infinite. The Jewish notion of God is so broad and so multifarious that there's surely something for anyone to grab hold of, from the God who loves music, to the God who values freedom, to the God who enjoys a good legal argument. As to how this influences my life: I'm still trying to work that out.”

Reva Mann, author of the compulsively readable memoir, The Rabbi’s Daughter, has a similar goal: to follow the Judaism she loves in a way that suits her independent, creative, free-spirited soul. The book packs a juicy punch: Mann, daughter of an eminent modern Orthodox London rabbi and granddaughter of a past Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Israel, breaks away, indulges in wild times filled with drug addiction and continual sexual exploits, rediscovers Judaism, and marries a Jerusalem Hasid, escapes once again, and winds up, at last, on a path towards healing and true spiritual attainment.

It’s racy stuff for someone from an Orthodox home, who later spent years in the ultra-Orthodox world, but Mann has never regretted telling her tale: “It is important to see how far a person can fall, in order to appreciate the real tshuva [repentance] and change towards health. If I hadn’t described the extremes, the holy and the profane…my message couldn’t come across and I wouldn’t be able to reach out to others in distress and give them support. My current conception of Judaism is to be honest and not hide things under the carpet in order to look good. My current conception of Judaism is to accept and not to judge others and to see the spark of holiness everywhere… even in the lowest places.”

Like Alderman, Mann portrays the hypocrisy of the Orthodox world: her father’s affluent congregants are predictably materialistic; Mann’s Hasidic husband is so obsessed with study and Jewish law that he barely notices his wife. But the book’s most poignant moments describe striking flashes of spiritual sensitivity and a heartfelt sense for Judaism’s beauty. When Mann watches her father die, she intuits a grand spiritual journey for him. She told me, “It made me believe in everything I had learnt about death, about our souls returning to a place of holiness. I saw there was nothing frightening at all.”

For fellow memoirist Shalom Auslander, there is everything frightening, for God Himself exists, and He’s meaner and mightier than the worst serial killer. Auslander, author of the short story collection Beware of God, has recently published the memoir Foreskin’s Lament, a chilling-yet-hilarious account of his rebellious childhood in the Orthodox enclave of Monsey, NY; brief spiritual revival in an Israeli yeshiva for wayward youth; and renunciation of Orthodoxy in young adulthood. Towards the end, Auslander wrestles with the question of whether to circumcise his newborn son.

Terrorized by the Torah’s never-ending tales of the Lord’s wrath: plagues, famines, floods—vengeance in all possible stripes for those who stray from His desires— Auslander spends much of his time obsessing about God’s potential revenge against him. God will kill him—or, more likely, will maim him and keep him alive and suffering for decades. God will murder Auslander’s wife and son. Inserting His awful hand into less grave but still vital arenas, God will cause the Rangers to lose because Auslander has violated Shabbos to watch them play.

Unlike many renouncers of Orthodoxy, Auslander retains his faith in the Almighty, a scary state for someone who has jettisoned the commandments of the Torah’s most powerful and wrathful character. And Auslander’s portrayal of God is horrific indeed. I asked him if he ever worried whether his description of God veered towards loshon hora: “I haven’t said anything about God that God doesn’t specifically say about Himself—He proudly claims credit for enslaving the Jews, flooding the world, killing the firstborns. Hell, His spokespeople (if that’s what rabbis can be called) even claim He caused the Holocaust. What God needs to do is shut the hell up until His attorney is present. He’s like a suicide bomber taping his confession.”

Harsh words, no doubt, but Auslander’s upbringing clearly emphasized God’s considerable potential for anger. And, perhaps most damaging, Auslander’s father on earth shared many of his father in heaven’s most damaging traits: fury, violence, an overwhelming desire to control—giving the Torah stories young Auslander studied in school a bitter analog throughout his daily life. Auslander is trying to raise his son with a more peaceful value system and wishes no children had to endure his childhood hell. He told me: “I have anger towards any system of belief that relies on frightening children and making them ashamed of who they are. I am angry at theologies rooted in terror and guilt. In my case, that belief system was called Judaism. For others, it is called Islam, and for others still it is called Calvinism, or Catholicism…. As for the Torah being the literal truth—I can tell you that I’ve read it enough times, and I sure as hell hope it isn’t. If the God they taught me about is the real God—Mr. Slaughter, Mr. Vengeance, Mr. Floods—if that’s the Guy running the show, well, we’re all fucked.”

A far cry from Alderman’s soft anger and equally soft affection for the God of the Torah—or Mann’s ever-evolving quest to emulate the kind, righteous God who embraced her father in his death. But we all know the saying: two Jews, three opinions. Three Jews… well, even God is no match for their differences.