Book Review
Hush, by "Eishes Chayil"
5/5 stars
"An inside of view of Haredi sexual abuse."
******
I read this book because I wanted a plausible explanation of why such events happen SO FREQUENTLY. (I was reading an article in an Israeli newspaper, and they pointed out that sexual abuse happens amongst the "Guardians of Halacha" Haredim about three times more frequently than the general population, and something like 50% more often than in Modern Orthodoxy.)

As is always the case with fictionalized depictions of a real life event, the reader will have to forever alternate between attributing didactic mass to situations that don't exist and overlooking useful information on the presumption that it is fiction.

This fiction book is based on a mishmash of true stories--In the author was a former resident and insider of Boro Park. (In the life of the author, it was actually an 11 year old boy who hanged himself. And because the stories of sexual abuse were too many for her to pick one single instance; she created a fictitious community because in her mind all of them are guilty of abuse, and to single out any one over another would be unfair.)

For all the things that are true, I can say that: they're strange beyond measure.

I live in a small corner of the Jewish world (Jewish Detroit), and I HAD thought that I could extrapolate my experience to what New York would be like.

And, that's just false.

A lot of these people in Jewish Detroit have tried to recreate what they imagine the shtetl to be.

But, these ones in Boro Park have absolutely succeeded--complete with all of the paranoia, and secrecy and distrust.

Haredim, in their own words:

1. All gentiles are Catholic and take orders from the Pope. ("Tomorrow the pope will tell them not to be nice, and they will turn into Nazis in one week.")

2. The next pogrom is only a few hours away. ("The Holocaust taught us the greatest lesson we'll ever need to know. Never, ever trust the goyim. Stay as far as away as possible. In the end, they will only hurt you.")

3. Sexual abuse victims are responsible for the abuse that befell them. ("Devory was a very sick and sad girl and that's what made her do what she did [2 sentences later].........Gittel, we don't really know why Devory did it [=committing suicide].")

4. If you side with a victim, it will damage your shidduch chances.... And that is the ONLY relevant consideration. ("My daughter will not be involved in this, you hear? Enough! Everyone will know! No one will come near us in shidduchim. Our lives will be ruined!")

This was after the abused girl had committed suicide, but before she was even buried--and before she was even cold, for that matter.

5. Completely sexually clueless. And I have heard of people unable to consummate the marriage because they don't know what to do. ("The Rebbe says that if you are in the same room with any girl, a baby will come.")

In this book, they had a 19 year old guy who was interested in his young wife's body. He thought that he needed counseling from his Rav because when his wife was sleeping, he wanted to lift up the sheets to look at "Miss P."

6. "You have no right to suggest a girl from my son whose grandmother was once divorced!"

7. "I want a boy who will learn Torah his entire life. Whatever happens, my husband will never work! I'll teach and we'll make do with what there is."

8. It has been true for many decades that Israel is a place that shelters pedophiles--and their families. ("Agudath Israel got involved and Chaim Cohen had connections with the police. Shmuli is in Israel already. They put him on a plane 2 hours after the police tried questioning him. The men.....did a good job keeping the police out.") Malka Leifer is not new.

9. People who tell the police are wrong.  ("Do you know how badly they beat up Reb Spitser because he agreed to talk to the police? Do you remember that other girl, how they kicked her out of school after she called the police for help from her father?")

10. Things are only going to get worse. ("Today's fanatics are tomorrow's moderates.")

11. "A husband shouldn't take out the garbage. He's a Torah scholar; you must treat him with the appropriate respect."

12. "Yankel stare at me blankly. 'What does "rape" mean?'"

13. "I mean, gevald, most boys wear their socks for at least a week, he was by far the cleanest. Did he realize how much laundry I would have if he changed his socks every day?'

14. "My friend. Devory Goldblatt. She hanged herself upstairs in our bathroom"......[Ma] "What? What are you talking about?"

15. "He told me of three boys who had been abused years ago by a Rebbie in the cheder. One parent complained, but who believed her? When the mother said that she'd call the police, they threatened her with a call to Social Services [with a false report that would make the parent lose her children]"

16. "The rabbonim will close down this paper in 1 week if we put in something on abuse. They will put a ban on it and nobody will dare buy it."

17. "I went to Reb Shlomo, the biggest Rav of Lakewood. He just kept saying, some subjects must be dealt with in silence. Some subjects are better left in silence."

*******

Second order thoughts:

¶ I do see some interesting use of irony:

1. The only person that seemed to be sane was the woman who had a nervous breakdown--and who was also a Gentile.

2.  The sparkling and studious 15-year-old Talmud scholar was the incestuous rapist.

¶ I also wonder for whom this book was written.

There are lots of very basic words that the author takes the trouble to define, as if her audience would not know what they meant.

 And this could be true only if her audience was gentile.

¶ I do believe that events like this do happen, I just can't believe that they do happen.

¶ Even as is impressive is the Sparkling Ashkenazi Intellectial Ability, how could there be so many stupid people in one place in this book?

-Neither parent noticed that one of their children was mounting a 9-year-old? 

-Nobody found any bloody underwear? 

-All those eyes in the house (with people sleeping in the same rooms), and nobody saw it? 

-Nobody thought to ask why a 9-year-old was terrified to sleep in her own home? 

-The coroner didn't find any signs of sexual trauma / scarring when they did the autopsy? (Was there even an autopsy?)

Verdict:

1. None of these things are new or surprising to me.

2. It seems like I have made the full circle back to something that Milan Kundera observed:

"(It turned out this way) but it could well have been otherwise."  "Es konnte auch anders sein"

You go to the city of Detroit (or, really any large black City) and the people there and go to nightclubs and dance and drink and shoot each other.

Haiti has been an independent country for a couple of centuries, and as many times they may try otherwise, they start out with a government and end up with a state racketeering operation.

So.....Haredim live in their quirky way, and they like so much self torture, mutual abuse and paranoia.

And there's no way to prove that it had to happen that way.

And so what? It is what it is. And they are what they are.

3. For somebody who tries to graft on to the Jewish people and they specifically choose that route.......CAVEAT EMPTOR!!