The Things with the Fetish

Imagine you have a family member that comes to your house. It´s kind of picky, as he/she -gender really does not have any relevance here - and already had some bad experience him/herself - with life, relationships and his/her own family. He/She doesn´t like your house, doesn´t like you, and even if you may be the other person in the world, he/she will not care a dime about you because the idea is to keep playing the role of the outsider no matter what and when.

The story of Jewish community in German after the war and particularly in the last three decades is complex and complicated, both in terms of human resources and conflicts, halachic challenges, perceptions and membership. For everyone coming from Israel or the USA, the difference is huge, but I suppose a Jew from Germany will feel the same about communities and traditions in the USA or France. 

Most of the people who are members of the community in Germany, do want to earn their life, have a place for the holidays, educate their children in the Jewish tradition, celebrate a Bar/Bat Mitzvah and eventually be guaranteed a place in a Jewish cemetery. Not everyone has plenty of time to play the star and conceptualize their identity. 

One of the things I always find impressive when I moved to Germany was to hear the stories of Jews coming from the Soviet Union. People who went to prison because they wanted to learn Yiddish, people who were harassed because they were Jews, no matter how high the personal status they reached. People who insisted to remain Jews no matter the challenges of being a Jew. There are not too many former communist countries whose Jews are so proud of their identity.

By attacking those humble people whose stories are worth so many good novels, someone is just following a pathway of those extremists this person is assuming she left to become herself. It´s so convenient to be an outsider in this country, talk about ´fetish´ while being oneself part of the system allowing only those funny individual people to take the floor. Claiming cancelled membership in a community does not promote you to an expert and even the less a judge in all things related to a community whose ´deep knowledge´ was acquired from newspapers or encounters in the bar around the corner. 

Playing the role of the outsider for purely personal branding reasons may work for a while, but repeating over and over again, on a highly pitched indignant voice the same empty sentences learned by heart to an audience paying you to play this role is aimed to fail. It does not take too long to figure out the intellectual kitsch. 

 

Short note about Unorthodox

It is not the first time when I promise myself to control my temptation to purchase immediately any book which is too much discussed in the media. I did the same with the 'famous' Unorthodox and purchased it shortly after the release. I have finished the book in two days and since then I am still wondering why this book is so popular.

I saw recently a TV show dedicated to the book and I realised that, besides the good PR of the edition house, it is the topic of intimate relationships that attracts so much the non-Jewish media. Indirectly, Feldman advertises a lot the Satmars, as not few media reports are tempted to identify this sect with Hasidism, which is not true and with core Judaism, which is even less true. But, apparently, the truth is not the strong point of this book introduced as a memoir, where some lectures - as Romance Reader by Pearl Abraham - were a  more powerful source of inspiration than the daily reality, or the account of a possible hidden crime in 21st century America was introduced as a sure fact. Many would say that she has a lot of imagination, maybe too much for pretending to write a memoir.

According to many of her media appearances, the author promises to come back with new literary works and I really hope that the next will be real good writing pieces. Unorthodox failed to be one, in my opinion, and when I saw a lady at a TV show moved to tears about the exceptional qualities of the book I thought something could be wrong with the reading standards in this world. I am not a snobbish reader and I do not displace the topic. But, compared with the good writing from Hush, for example, this book is centuries behind.

As for the story in itself, it could be an interesting story, but is not presented as a personal account. The lack of measure and balance gives the impression that all Jewish families are hard with their children (''All my aunts and uncles are hard on their children, it seems to me. They berate them, embarass them, and yell at them". p. 37) or many Jewish children are left because their mothers discover that they want to stop being married to a man with psychological problems and discover their love for the same sex (the special case of Deborah Feldman's family). In comparison with most Satmar children, the rest of the Jewish children do not lear distorted stories about Zionism and the state of Israel and many girls and women are able to study and read books. We do have mothers and fathers that love us and we do not meet our shidduch in a supermarket. Sometimes I felt that Deborah Feldmans' book is in fact an example of a Satmar way of thinking, trying to suggest to the reader - not always very much informed - that it is no other true that what she is telling us. Obviously, wrong. Another example is given by the account of her first marital problems, including the practice of the mikveh, when clearly she was the victim of the lack of proper guidance. I am sure she did not have a hard life and the guidance of a rabbi and a healthy family environment was lacking, but this is only the problem, not the solution. 

Hopefully, the Jewish world is more diverse than viewed through the lenses of an ex-Satmar. 

Voyeurism

In a world as ours, you get easily sick. Sometimes I can understand - but not fully agree - with the idea of keeping your children far away of the media, unless they are not able to do the selection of the information by themselves. Anyway, it is not always easy to create your nest of normality unde the bombardment of bad news about special people.

For me, this week, the top example of voyeurism was the snowslide of articles about Hasidism and sexuality. The news were there for a long time, but I discovered them in a long row. Praised, explained and rejected, the authors are entering into the merry-go-round of talking over and over again about private life, customs and bedrooms. Most probably, the stars of the yellow media grew up and it was nothing else to talk about in the press? We talk about the "sexual habits" of groups as Satmar and Gur, to a relatively uneducated audience. No, we are not Amish or Mormons (a post about them and us, after Shabbat, promise) and not sexual deviants. For your information, the anti-Semitic rhetorics contain various references to so-called sexual "irregularities". Probably Deborah Feldman (whose book I will read one day, but not now) is not aware about this.

I also can understand that an academic is keen to share the results of her research to a wider audience, but I would prefer to address first my scholars and not the wide media. Academic work is hard work, and you need appreciation for your results, but why not thinking twice about the consequences of such discourses in a media avid of sensationalism.

I think that among both secular and religous Jews, there are happy people and sad people, people happy with them lot or people struggling against their yetzer hara. Each of us is different, and this is a blessing. Some of us are poor, the others rich. It is always important to accept everything happening to you with humility and integrity. You can use your words for cursing or explaining the world, adding value or expressing your self-hate for not understanding why we are living.

Shabbat Shalom!