I just read a really, really incredibly book. The author’s name is a pseudonym for “Woman of Valor.”
It’s billed as a Young Adult book, but it’s essentially the memoir of this young woman’s experience growing up in a Hasidic community in Borough Park. What makes her experience so different is that she had a best friend who killed herself at the age of 9, because she was being raped by her brother and no one, including her parents, would acknowledge what was going on, for the very real fear of bringing shame and trouble to the family.
She purposely never names the sect, because she thinks the blame is shared by all of these communities.
It was an incredibly upsetting, moving and infuriating book.
On another, related note – what was fascinating to me was her description of the first year of marriage; and just the cultural isolation. Her husband not realizing that Chasidic women had breasts – he thought he was just a goyische thing. They had never heard of Oprah.
It was incredibly eye-opening to read about how far removed from the secular, modern world these Brooklynites are. It’s hard to believe this community exists only a few miles away. I also live adjacent to a Hasidic community here in Queens – but obviously nothing like Borough Park.
Books like this are so, so important and it’s such a big part of why I am so open and supporting of Young Adult fiction.
But stories like this make me so angry and upset. I’m used to getting angry about polygamy and Scientology and sharia law and all of these other more “traditional” misogynistic cultures. It’s a very different feeling getting so upset and being so disgusted by a community and religious tradition that I can identify with and generally find myself defending. But behavior like this is so endemic that … there really is no defense.
What to Drink: Manischevitz. Or a good shot of scotch.
Tags: Highly Recommend, Judaism, Sexual Abuse
