Love and Marriage in Orthodox Jewish Communities

There is a lot of negative advertising about Orthodox Jewish dating, mostly given very extreme stories based on very personal experiences. Definitely, there are things that are not good, and there is a big ongoing problem regarding the get (divorce) refusals, as well as a shidduch crisis and there are so many issues that young people from Orthodox Jewish communities should face. 

But, think about the following thing: what about putting some of those many serious issues aside - without forgetting them - while trying to learn something about this different way of dating compared to the system we are used to as free and secular persons...Orthodox dating, with maximum 5 - special cases - dates before getting engaged and then married, with no physical contact before the proper wedding and with different set of agenda and priorities is not for everyone. Still, with an open mind and especially a heart, everyone can learn something different from it.

Completely randomly today I´ve stumbled upon a 3-part documentary released three years ago, about Love and Marriage in Orthodox Jewish Communities. Looking back to all the couples experiences, with different backgrounds, but all part of the general concept of Orthodox Jewish group, I may say that there were three hours well-used. 

In full honesty, I am not into this dating any more. Not at all. I had my own portion of humiliations while dealing with shadchanim - professional matchmakers - who hurrying to make a mitzva were ready to convince me that the donkey with bald patches screaming help from the top of his lungs was a beautiful horse of the purest breed. Like one of the protagonists from the documentary, I was told more than once that maybe my standards are too high and I have too much expectations, while not being any more in my 20s, plus too educated for someone looking for a good heimishe wife. Most of the shadchanim in this movie are the really bad guys, with conversations touching upon skin color, how divorcees are ´not accepted´ or how women should compromise on so many aspects. 

But hopefully, those characters are not too often present into the story, who´s taken over by the real people looking for a match. There are very different personalities - including someone who, at the time when the documentary was made belonged to the very strict - in terms of man/women relationship - sect of Gur. They are young, or less (meaning in their late 20s), all looking to build a Jewish home. Creating a mental/intellectual connection before any physical contact occurs, looking for the common values and what connects two people in terms of future and views on things is such a beatiful bridge to be built between two people looking for more than friendship but more valuable than a random physical encounter. Why should one waste her/his time with someone you don´t see yourself with in a week, month or even a year? 

From a strict religious perspective, there are main lines one is looking for while dating, and such aspects are clarified from the very beginning: wig or head covering? working or just studying in the yeshiva or both? what customs to follow? But actually, having a small basis creates infinite possibilities for further development of the relationship. In the secular dating, will you want to go out with someone walking in flip-flops? Someone who drives a car or goes to work on a bike? Serious dating is about making choices and respecting one´s values, while allowing the relationship to develop slowly and testing it when necessary. It is so hard nowadays to find someone sharing the same - human - values with, but taking your time and keeping up with your set of values, daring to ask questions and to say ´no´ when one feels is no future for the heart - although the mind seems to enjoy its wanderings - is such a journey worth taking it. It is that ´click´ or ´chemistry´ that is needed for setting up the premises for a couple, and the further work to make things work, based on respect, common interests and honesty.

Finding the right one for religious people involves praying for a sign or asking for the advice of a rabbi and hoping that he or she is really the one that Gd supposely assigned long before birth. But except some people that for so many reasons are much better alone - as they cannot poison other people with their insecurities and inner dishonesty - we are not all of us looking for signs that by staying with someone we made the right decision? 

After watching this movie I´ve finally realized that although my dating itinerary was not the happiest one, and had to deal with a lot of human failures along the way, looking for values, taking my time and trying a connection of hearts before anything else helped me tremendously to come closer to that special person I was waiting for my whole life. And this is more than enough. 

My Story of An American Pickle

 

Drown for 100 years in a barrel of pickles, Hershel Greenbaum is back to life in a Brooklyn and Williambsburg of hipsters. Among them, Ben, his gran-grand nephew, who is trying unsuccessfully to launch an app for ethnically conscious consumers. Welcome to the world of An American Pickle!

The story in itself has a plot and it resonates probably with many non-religious American Jews. Ben is the ancestor of Jews (religious) who had left their Cossack-threatened communities looking for a better future in the ´goldene medina´ (which was the USA at the time). As Ben, played by Seth Rogen, who also plays Hershel, there are many American Jews who made their Bar Mitzva, know they are Jewish but couldn´t care about it and this is also a choice. The net that connects can be, and often is, wider than the minyan of the synagogue. It can be a cemetery plot, or a pickle. 

The film has a lot of action, hilarious encounters and really really will make you laugh - even if you are not Jewish. But the thing - my thing, actually - is that by the fact of being made by people with probably a very limited - if any - Jewish knowledge, it gets it wrong at least in one respect. 

Hershel, which used to be a religious Jews - at least it is dressed as one, although his daily practice is just supposed and this for those who are expecting him to do so, is coming back to life after 100 years but his behavior is completely ´normal´. He doesn´t care about kosher, not praying, not donning tefillin. He is doing his pickle thing brilliantly, even starts a Twitter-storm with some inappropriate religious comments about another religion. but his character is mostly empty. Ben, on the other side, it looks more ´natural´ and genuine because, it seems reflects the lifestyle of the film producers. 

I will not call An American Pickle a bad or mediocre movie, is just slightly prankish by its inability to create representations of characters as they are, especially based on their historical authenticity. On the other side, the pickle story is really funny and entertaining, beyond the hipster-take. As for the rest of it, I am not impressed at all, but I am happy I´ve finally watched it as it explains how different the identity of Jews living in America can be. 

 

The Last Book of Adana Moreau: some thoughts

Every single month, I am reading an impressive amount of books and novels with a Jewish topic, young or mature authors, men and female, modern or classical stories, for children, young adults, middle grade or a wider audience. Some are published in English, but also in German, French, Hebrew or Italian. Many relate on topics pertaining to Jewish life, the rift between religious and secular Jews, finding love out of the tribe, longing about a lost home country that will never feel as home, making - or refusing to make - aliyah. There is a comperehensive list of topics that repeat themselves over and over again. Therefore, is there any chance to change and challenge the ways in which Jewish novels are written?

The Lost Book of Adana Moreau by Michael Zapata, that I have access to in audio format narrated by Coral Pena, seems to be an inspiring place to start a discussion about the future of Jewish-themed novels. I haven´t been surprised at such a great extent by a book since discovering Jorge L. Borges, many many springs away. 

The book is mindblowing by its complexity of the story and its references: both historical - Jewish and universal - as well as pertaining to the world. And it´s populated by an enormous amount of characters as well, that the author is playing skillfully as a puppeteer with his feet steady in the middle of the world. Among them, a one-arm businessman from Columbia, a (Jewish) pirate, Sicilian soldiers, a physician interested in parallel universes, Adana Moreau who wrote and published a SF book that got lost in New Orleans after her premature death in 1929 and recovered during our common era through an accident of sorts.

The search for Adana´s son turns into a quixotic journey, which connects, as patches of colourful but diverse pieces of fabric, Jewish stories from all over the world, flowing seamlessy through centuries. The paradigm of the parallel universes resonates with the complexity itself of the Jewish lives, caught between present and the heavy - unbearable sometimes - past. Jumping from a parallel quanta to another, the story within the stories can be read as the the paradigm of Jewish narrative as well. Too diverse to be said into one story, very much connected with disparate geographical references from all over the world, never complete without the (un)safe details of the wider social spectrum. It sounds as a post-modern chaos and listening to the story I had to stop and listen again a fragment or another, but all comes together as a story. 

The Last Book of Adana Moreau is bold in its embrace of diversity of all kinds, but it also creates a happy literary precedent where creativity is highly at work and there are no limits for its courage to say all and everything.

Creating Fake Targets

Playing with the fire of racism and creating inappropriate fears against a different category of population never did good, especially to a democracy. Elections in time of health, economic and social debacle prove to be an unusual ground for outburst of absurd yet well targeted declarations.

The latest in the row of the neverending electoral cycle in Israel is the assumption the prime-minister in office Benjamin Netanyahu made this week - calling himself several times ´the pilot´, the one and only qualified to fly the plane that is Israel -, in an interview for the English-speaking voters in Israel - Anglos - with senior editor of Jerusalem Post, Lahav Harkov: the latest decision of the Supreme Court requiring to recognize Reform and Conservative conversions performed in Israel will encourage ´fake converts´ among the asylum seekers/refugees currently in a limbo in the country. As simple as that...

A couple of elections ago, the same ´pilot´ was warning that Arabs are coming ´in droves´ to vote on behalf of other candidates, and many many years ago, he was very vocal against the late Yitzhak Rabin, participating at very violent gatherings that were stirring the boiling environment that finally leaded to the assasination of the prime minister. The same ´King Bibi´, with his diplomatic experience, spindoctoring in a fine English, who is shaking hands with a Kahanist like Itamar Ben Gvir and the delirious Betzalel Smotrich. Nothing new under the sun, as already expressed in a very good book I´ve reviewed on the blog about the ´turbulent life and times of Benjamin Netanyahu´.

The story with the ´fake converts´ is not new and was also shared by Shas, the party who promises to represent the interest of Jews from the Middle East, leaded by the former convinct for embezzlement ladies and gentlement, the Minister of Interior, Arye Deri. Deri who theoretically should consider the applications for asylum on behalf of the refugees that entered Israel illegally. 

Currently, there are around 30,000 asylum seekers in Israel, mostly coming from Sudan and Eritrea and claiming they in life-threatening situations, the majority having been entering the country via Egypt. The Shas Facebook post said that following the decision of the Supreme Court ´thousands of infiltrators and foreign workers will become Jewish as Reform converts´. There are no evidences suggesting that there is any interest on behalf of people belonging to this category for converting to Judaism. Not few of them are just in a limbo, with no place to go and finding themselves in an incertain risky situation. 

Gilad Kariv, reform rabbi and activist on behalf of the Reform Movement in Israel, and Labor candidate, explained in a Facebook post: ´The Conservative and the Reform movements in Israel convert only those who have residency status. No labor migrants. Not asylum seekers. Not tourists´. A basic information that Arye Deri would have known already in his long assignment as Ministry of Interior. 

But obviously, no one is naive enough to expect any logical thinking in this case. King Bibi, ´the pilot´, is playing his manipulative card, again. Together with the Kahanists and Shas and the Haredi parties and who knows who else, he just doesn´t want to give up. The other news is that, again, his opposition is as weak as the argument of the conversions...Which means there will be another - and another - election soon?

´Before the Revolution´

 The day when the Shah was gone, the head of the Mossad mission in Tehran got a headache...

During the mid-1970s, thousand of Israelis were working in Iran, alongside with Americans and Europeans. From kibbutzniks that suddenly had a maid to arm dealers and people that trained - and even created, some say - the terrible secret service of SAVAK, they were happy to work for better salaries and enjoy a life a luxury. They were so deep into the bubble that most of them were almost completely disconected from the reality and it was very hard to convince to leave Iran, even after Khomeini returned in glory and the Shah´s portraits were set to fire. 

Iran needed Israel for its military knowledge and knowledge in the field of agriculture, among others. Israelis were happy to enjoy the lavish lifestyle at a time when Israel was coping with economic hardships, while being handsomely paid. The Israeli embassy in Tehran, lead by an ambassador, was a well known secret. Iran needed Israel against the Arab countries. Israel needed a friend in the Middle East. Deal.

The parents of the film director of Before the Revolution, Dan Shadur, were among the people that enjoyed the life in Tehran while working hard. His father was building the military basis used by SAVAK. Through personal, intimate films and interviews with some of those who were part of the bubble at the time, Shadur recreated a historical episode of a historical relationship. I´ve particularly appreciated the multitude of points of view and the different evaluations and approaches of the situation. Most though completely misread the situation and the people, although they noticed the big gap between the North - rich - and the South - very poor - of Tehran, as well as the increasing insatisfaction of the local population under the Shah´s dictatorship. Iranians wanted ´to have their bread and breathe´ outlines one of persons interviewed. US, France and Germany didn´t want to stop Khomeini because according to the very easy Cold War logic, he was not a communist. He was just religious. 

Israelis left and developped other lucrative relationships with countries from Africa, South or Central America. Not few of them were dictatorships. From the balcony of the building that once hosted the Israeli diplomatic mission, Yasser Arafat was greeting the masses. There is always a ´before´ and an ´after´, no matter what. History has a long take and it´s made of many episodes. Some of them so surprising that not even the most intelligent spies in the world can accurately predict.

Rating: 5 stars

Book Review: City of A Thousand Gates by Rebecca Sacks

For a long time I haven´t devoured a book on a Jewish/Israeli topic with such a pleasure and curiosity...

I´ve spent my every single free time this weekend listening to City of Thousand Gates by Rebecca Sacks, narrated by Lameece Issaq. I am reading a lot of literature produced in Israel or on Israeli/Jewish topics (the regular blog posts on my blog are the testimony), but I´ve been rarely impressed either by the topic or the literary depictions. This book succeeded though to deeply impress me. 

With an impressive cast of characters, covering a wide variety of individualities, among both Jews and Arabs in Israel, City of Thousand Gates brings people together and separate them, following the unknown destiny´s ways.

The cast of characters is impressive: from the West Bank anglos to the Palestinian academic, the bio mom from America married with an Israeli to the young religious teenager freshly engaged that want to have a taste of the secular dating game. There is also Vera, a German journalist interested to report about Hebron and Palestinian topics, that used to snort coke with Israeli in Berlin and moved to Israel for almost the same reasons Israeli are - or used to - moving to Berlin (minus the price of Milky). There are also Palestinians applying for Israeli passport, checkpoints and tattooed soccer players, both Jewish and Arabs.

Sacks spent a couple of years in Israel, particularly the West Bank, and through the characters, their interactions - ways of talking - and the descriptions of their locations I´ve felt instantly back in Israel. This includes also the various ´anglo´ slangs as well as those used in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. There are real people we are talking about, not some dolls-like inanimated golems brought to life for the sake of answering the market requirements when it comes to topics pertinent to Israel. There are all those contradictions, denial - as in living in a place and gently refusing to ignore its realities and hardships - and the humour, the best medicine for the everyday life under those conditions. 

From the literary point of view, the author manages admirably the art of switching POWs and portraying people through their interactions and human reactions. Although the humanity is what makes us all, members of the human race, the specificities of the geography, history - both global and personal - as well as the language make us individuals with special features and particular reactions to life encounters.

Made up of different short stories with characters whose destinies intertwin - after all, it´s a small country - City of Thousand Gates maps the humans of Israel and their everyday existence in a world where history doesn´t let you breath normally. It may turn grotesque sometimes, as in the case of Emily, that shortly after escaping a terrorist attack, makes a selfie at the location of the explosion. But more grotesque is sometimes the view of people from outside, anyone, misreading facts and looking for symbols where there is none.

Rating: 4.5 stars

Book Review: Jephte´s Daughter by Naomi Ragen

In the Book of Judges, Jephtah (or Yiftah) led successfully the Israelites against Ammonites. In exchange, he made a vow to Gd to sacrifice whatever would come out of the door of his house first. It was his only daughter who showed up but unrelented, he went on with his vow. What a foolish character? What a crazy vow to make and keep, and how contrary to the Akeida of Yitzak when Gd stopped Avraham from killing his only son, whose faith he wanted to test himself. 

Jephte´s Daughter by Naomi Ragen was written at the end of the 1980s. Issues like the way in which women are treated sometimes by extreme men blind to see the many stumbling blocks they built around the Torah, are more stringent than ever. The erasure of women from the public realm is unfortunately a widespread behavior within the Orthodox communities in Israel and abroad, and it jeopardize the essence of Judaism.

The rich scion of a prestigious Hasidic dynasty arrives in Jerusalem from America in a glamorous style - old Sadagura style - to find a husband for her only daughter. All his relatives died in the Shoah and the husband of her daughter is expected to lead further his prestigious dynasty. Himself, he is rather busy with his businesses but is looking for a brilliant talmid of his generation, to head his heritage further. Isaac Meyer Harshen seems to be the right choice and although Batsheva started to have doubts about his real nature, they moved on with the wedding, for reasons of preserving the future. 

Once she moved to Jerusalem, in the ultra-orthodox headquarters of Mea Shearim, in the house his father bought, fully equipped, allowing them to have a relatively carefree life, that Isaac is learning daily in the Kollel, the things are getting worse and worse. Physical intimacy is considered a painful duty, her books of English literature are burned, she is constantly beaten, including during her pregnancy, she has to give up her right of using the common bank account and the modesty dress code is close to rags. Although such an interaction between husband and wife does not represent the way in which observant Jews are treating their wives, such cases, especially among the Gur Hasidim, may be possible. 

But he had just acted the way he thought he was expected to´. Isaac is an interesting character, in his stone heart way of behaving. He is far from being a scholar, was bullied and beat in school himself and is emotionally limited to understand life, no matter how much Torah studies. Clearly, Torah was not meant to be a rigid way of learning, but its study beautifies life. On the other hand, there is the community pressure, the ´fishbowl effect´, when people refuse to think by themselves as they are under a tremendous pressure from outside to behave in ways that the frum society expect them to. 

Batsheva´s drama is being torn between her obligations towards her parents and her religious duties. A brilliant mind herself, she is forced to submit to the instable husband. Once becoming a mother, she sees better what the future can be for her son and what knowledge he can acquire from such a father and his surrounding society - especially the cheder where pupils are encouraged to improve their learning through beatings.

Her radical decision to leave everything behind and move to London was not a break-up from Gd. She is keeping the mitzvot, eats kosher and abstain from any physical intimacy with a man, as she is not divorced yet. Her gentle return to herself is an example how a woman can keep being observant in dignity, while fully accomplishing her human potential. ´Tomorrow, she thought, and for the first time in many years, her days stretched out before her as her own book of clean blank pages full of endless, delightful possibilities´. 

Naomi Ragen succeded to manage a big range of characters, in a dramatic yet harmonious way. The non-Jewish characters of the book do represent a variety of typologies, from the anti-Semites to the simple neutral persons or her good friend Elizabeth who, besides being by principle against Batscheva´s strict upbringing, acts as a matchmaker from heaven. 

From the literally points of view, the book has so many surprising twists, until the very last page. As an avid reader of Naomi Ragen´s books - more to come in the next weeks and months - I´ve always found some interesting and relatable aspects about Jewish life and practice to think about. 

Rating: 4.5 stars