Stop Sensationalising Orthodox Jews

 

Non-Jewish yellow media is so hungry for reading accounts of Jewish Orthodox life. With the emphasis of the voyeur, memoirs, accounts and everything that has to do with those ´strange´ habits of the Jews who don´t eat together with the non-Jews, don´t mix with the non-Jews, don´t even buy from them apparently is becoming instant popularity. Those revelatory stories about all those strange stories such as the mikweh and the shaven head and oh, those wigs the observant women are wearing are turning any religious Jew into a naked doll which is turned on all parts and examined to be sure that it actually looks the same like...you know, the other humans.

Mazel Tov by JS Margot - the pen name of Belgian-Flemish journalist Margot Vanderstraeten - is the story of an ´extraordinary friendship´ between the author and a Jewish Orthodox family. The story starts in the 1990s when Margot was hired to help with the homeworks and other school-related tasks the children of a family whose father was working in the diamonds´ sector. Probably at the time there was no Netflix and not too many OTD memoirs so we may a bit excuse the author for being so awkward when meets her employers for the first, second, third...time. 

Those Jews, who are interogating her about her - then - Iranian boyfriend, are always building up walls around themselves and are stuck in their old centuries-old rules. In the end, of course, she is becoming a friend of them but still, it´s nice to have different, exotic friends. Plus, they don´t want to answer her repeated questions about how was it in the war and other intrusions into a private trauma.

To be honest, there is nothing wrong with the tone of the book - which I had access to in the German edition - and it is well written, but the way in which every couple of pages one has to read about how different, and strange and bizarre customs Jews - the Orthodox ones - have, it´s embarassing. It´s not antisemitic, but it is, as they call it in plain German - ´doof´.

Rating: 1.5 stars