A Hassid traveling across the Brooklyn Bridge
She decided to use someone who consciously rejected Hassidism as her guide to Hassidism in America. Indeed, as if to make her findings more impressionistic, Hella eventually teamed up with Malkie Schwartz, a woman who helps Hassidim who have strayed integrate into American society.
ST responds:
Sadly, this is a very predictable response from a YU reviewer. First of all, it is intellectually dishonest. The book never proports to be a "guide to hassidism in America" and the author is very explicit in her introduction that the "rebels" might constitute a minority, but an important one nonetheless. Further, while the reviewer tries hard (to what effect, one wonders) to demonstrate his own postmodern credentials by employing terms like "script," "text" and "unpack," his review does little to illuminate or address the actual issues raised by the book: namely why people "rebel," what the experience is like, and the treatment some receive by their families and communities for doing so.
The reviewer seems to willfully misrepresent the author's intentions and experiences--by claiming, for example, without any evidence, that she was "exhausted by her impotence" and "browbeaten by her travails photographing bridges" (where on earth did he get this? And the comparison to terrorists is equally silly and melodramatic). And when he says that "Leah can step in and account for the rampant sexual molestation who (as Winston claims, as opposed to Modern Orthodox people) keep the archaic sexual laws of Niddah" he is writing fiction. Nowhere is this statement made about the Modern Orthodox and Niddah, and in no way does Leah, or anyone else in the book, tie sexual molestation to the observance of those laws.
It is almost as if the reviewer is anticipating and responding to an argument that is never actually made by the author. If the reviewer's quarrel with the book is that it fails to present the findings in a positivistic, scientific way, this is something that can be debated. But let's not confuse presentation with substance. And to try to discredit people's experience by claiming that they are insane is a tactic that betrays nothing more than the reviewer's unwillingness to confront some of the more serious issues raised by these people's stories. What of the intense pressure to conform, the confusion, rejection, and the abuse described by these people? Are these unworthy of mention? Or is it just more convenient to belittle them (and the author, for that matter) as "misfits" whose experiences have absolutely nothing to do with the context in which they were raised. It would have been nice to see something different, but again, this may be too much to ask.
Hella Winston contributes this image:
Hella writes: For the record, we also took a bunch of photos on the Williamsburg Bridge. But it's pretty ugly and nondescript, especially compared to the Brooklyn Bridge, no? (Someone also tried to Photoshop his peyos to make them more visible, but it ended up looking totally ridiculous).
The reviewer seems to want to turn the taking of poetic/aesthetic license into a "marketing ruse," the not so subtle implication being that there was some actual intent to deceive the reader, presumably not only with the photograph, but with the content of the book as well. This was and is not the case. The cover image was chosen to convey, graphically, the condition of being "between two worlds," as well as a sense of movement and journey.
posted by Tzemach Atlas at 7:38 AM
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