If you read a certain amount of books, more than the average anyway, on a specific topic or belonging to a well-defined genre, sooner or later you will become satiated with the topic. There is a certain pattern repeated over and over again, with only personal details filled in. Take, for instance, the case of the off the derech memoirs, out of which I´ve read a good bunch of in the last years, as the genre is becoming more and more popularity.
You have the person who does not fit in, the oppressive religious conformity that cannot be tolerated any more, following an illumination-kind of acknowledging the absurdity of some or all religious tenets. Afterwards, there is the fight or the loneliness, faced with the lack of skills for economic survival and very often the struggle to keep the children or the broken heart for not being able to keep them.
However, despite the overall predictability, I will not give up reading those memoirs, because the more repetitive they are, the clearer the certain trends within religious communities - I read in general memoirs of getting out of faith: there is a new generation that may find different ways of positioning towards religion and willingly or not, even the most closed groups will be suprepticiously changed one day.
Take, for instance, the Gur Hasidim, who are practicing very strict marital relationships, considered by many as oppressive: not using the given name for the wife, separate walking ways, discourage of any closeness between spouses unless for procreation. Being born a Gur in America, experiencing queerness from an early age, Dr. Sara Glass succeeded to write her own story: becoming independent, cutting the dependency ties with the community while keeping her precious children.
Manipulated into religion by the sake of her children and the religious background of her family - ´A kosher woman does the will of her husband´ -, she had to play the appearances, even after her divorce, otherwise she may have lose them. The power of the batei din - the religious tribunal deciding, among other, in issues of divorce and child custody - may overcome that of the secular authorities, especially when the woman does not have the proper knowledge and advice for checking the content of the documents she is signing. You are not represented by a lawyer in the front of the religious courts thus the risk of being completely unaware of the legal consequences of the documents signed. Religious communities are tied by trust, obviously, why do someone may need a lawyer anyway?
Kissing Girls on Shabbat that I had the chance to have access to in audiobook format, read by the author, focus less on how bad, backwarded and generally disgusting the community is - as it is the case in at least one such memoir - but on her own story. Her own work to achieve the best version of herself, the engagement trying to help people in a similar situation, her doubts and obsessive fears of being taken away her children. Also, more importantly, the importance of actively being involved in helping distressed people, unable to get over by themselves of their mental health struggle, overcoming generational or recent family trauma.
It is love not hate or revenge that motivates her life. At 24, she was the mother of two children, at 32 she came out, and established her career as a therapist while being together with her children. Education gives power, including to gently overcome one own´s struggles.
Kissing Girls on Shabbat - whose collage-like cover is also worth mentioning - is a moving testimony of those strengths.
Rating: 4.5 stars
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