I discovered Hush while e-reading Tablet. In the next ten minutes I ordered the book on Amazon and one week ago this time I was about to finish it. It took me another week for finding the time and the wording to write about it and almost one day for writing these paragraphs. The issue of sexuality and abuse in the orthodox communities was rarely - if ever - approached in the English speaking literature. The author, assumed to be a woman using the pen name
Eishes Chayil (Woman of Valor, the song that every Shabbat is honoring the woman as a mother, sister and holding a big responsibility in the perpetuation of Yiddishkeit), is belonging to this community and writes with a sensibility that I found surprising. Is educated, but know and respect in a very delicate way the traditional tabus and sensibilities. You will not have direct references to sex, even the book is talking about the victim of a sexual abuse. Or other explicit physical descriptions. The author is using the words in a very delicate way to describe terrible and controversial feelings and the influences of the creative writing classes are producing a very pleasant lecture. You don't even realize that something was missing and the words are powerful enough for suggesting explicit situations. And although the subject is very sad, there are enough episodes making you laugh.
And you need a lot of suggestions and paraphrases for the subject of this book: the education of the refuse to speak about the sexual abuses in the orthodox community. The knowledge is sealed beyond the closed doors but not for condemning the perpetrators, but to cover their facts. And this don't have nothing to do with Judaism or religion or "the tradition". It is the direct consequence of misunderstanding the role of the justice - equal for all commiting crimes. If nobody is taking measures and exposing the abuses, the potential perpetrators will be encouraged to do so. From my point of view, the attitude of the parents were relevant for this pattern: the mothers - Eishes Chayil - refused to acknowledge that the abuse were true and when they had all the evidences, they continued to recommend the hush-wise attitude for reasons of preservation of the community. But such an attitude is against the role that an Eishes Chayil should play in the community, as avertisor and guardian of the tradition. Such abuses don't have nothing to do with it and revealing the truth it is not even an act of justice, but the wake-up call for the return to the real values and tradition. You cannot build a community based on people with rotten behaviors, praying during the day and abusing their sisters during the night.
Another interesting aspect revealed in the book is the relation with the outside community. The perception based on an eternal conflict between "we" and "them" is creating the idea of a certain conflictual difference. Hence, the conception that making public all these scandalous situation the world will be turned around us. If so, create the proper mechanisms for preventing and punishing. And let the victims speak out - their suffering might be offering enough incentives for putting and end to this culture tolerating the evil.
And if it any question about the need to open a discussion on these issues, here it is the newest example pledging for the end of the "hush" way of thinking.
