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.