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A review by lpm100
The Mountain Family by Tzirel Rus Berger
2.0
Book Review
"The Mountain Family"
2/5 stars
"If the love child of Pollyanna and Mary Poppins overwrote an implausible book....."
*******
This book is not worth a second read and that's because it probably wasn't really even worth a first read.
Two major reasons:
1. I don't know how much I believe that this happened.
These books that I find published on labels (Artscroll/Mesorah/Feldheim) are just a little bit over the top when they are giving a hagiography of some person-- and let's be clear that that's what that is, because if you did not know that no one was perfect you would not find it out from any of these type books.
Specifically, I have in mind the character of Avraham ben Avraham in the (eponymous) book by Selig Schanowitz.
It's not even clear whether or not "Avraham ben Avraham" existed, but the author gave such glowing descriptions of all the characters in the book and intricate details of their conversations (from a couple of centuries ago) that it makes me believe that this is another one of those stories /haggadaot that have been told so many times and so vividly that people forget that *they never happened*.
And the purpose of this story is is not really even to narrate a historical event, but to create a narrative about how the scales fell from the eyes of so many people when they decided to convert from Xtianity to Judaism.
Or to lionize this or that Rabbi.
The fact that so much $hit in this book does not go together is what makes me believe that it didn't happen:
**The author grows up in an upper middle class West Coast family, but she decides to marry into a family of hillbillies and gives birth to 11 children while living in houses that didn't even have running water(!).
What sane person does that?
It would be one thing if she had grown up using outhouses all her life and kept on using them, but the thing is that she didn't. (And how do you deal with sexual odors with no running water? You do kind of wonder that since she conceived many times under those circumstances.)
***(p.135) Living in a tent? And homeschooling her children while they lived in a tent? It also appears that she conceived her 10th child while living in that tent.
***The author also claims to have read "thousands of books" (p.145). But couldn't learn to speak Hebrew?
***(p.174) She claims that people accepted her kids into a Jewish Day School before conversion, but I have a gold standard conversion and one out of the three local schools in Jewish Detroit (Darchei Torah) did not accept my kids because they did not want blacks or converts there. Also, they put her child right in the appropriate grade even though all of them had been homeschooled and therefore none of them had had any of the Judaic content necessary.
***People just came out of the woodwork to buy plane tickets for her children to go and study abroad in Yeshiva, even though she had not yet converted. Also, there would be the issue of a court converting a minor who would live / be under the care of a parent who was not Jewish.
***The converting Rabbi told her that if she lived through a year of Jewish holidays then the conversion would be finished--even though I have never heard of a rabbi giving a deadline for conversion.
***(p.182) Chabad outsources anti-missionary work to her before she even converts?
***This woman doesn't fill out a single job application, there is no single page where she meets somebody to talk about a job in order to fund these grand schemes moving from Atlanta to Baltimore. (WITH NO JOB!)
Do these things really make sense? (I think a wise old Jewish woman by the name of Judge Judy said that "if it doesn't make sense, then that's because it's not true.")
***Then her parents move to Israel (under what right of return?) and decide to stay Xtians. AND she keeps in contact with them? (Orthodox communities are justifiably EXTREMELY suspicious, and if she had done that it's quite certain that she would not have been accepted as warmly as she claims.)
***(p.279) then her family turns out to be Crypto Jews. Of course. (Do you know anybody who *doesn't* think that they are a member of the Lost tribes / Crypto Jews?)
In DNA tests were available at the time of publishing this book in order to settle this issue.
*******
2. I'm also not sure if the authors were aware of this, but a heavy fraction of people who convert to Judaism of any type (and especially Orthodoxy) are frankly insane--lots of personal experience in this aspect that is beyond the scope of this review, as well as an uncomfortable book by Bernice Weiss. (Choosing to be Jewish.)
This is not a small matter to me, because I also happen to be an Orthodox convert and for every single consecutive person that I meet that wants to convert/ has converted AND needs to be institutionalized....... It really makes me wonder who I am.
And let's be clear that the protagonist of this book was frankly insane.
Maybe if the co-author had been aware, then she would have been sensitive enough to choose a better example.
Of the book:
1. The prose is: gushing, bloated, phantasmagoric, and implausible. (Sample sentence: "I was left out in the dark, pleading to gain admittance through the hallowed doors of Judaism, until that momentous day 6 months before, when I finally stepped through the portal of my destiny.")
2. About 4 to 5 hours of reading time
3. In a nutshell, the protagonist is raised in a deeply religious (they seemed to have seventh-day Adventist tendencies) upper middle class family in California.
She goes through 10 children living hand to mouth, divorces and moves to Jerusalem.
And then remarries and has a blended family with 17 children. (This severely handicapped husband was also able to sire 7 children; I guess he was fully functional in at least *one* way.)
She eventually has extended family in Israel (none of whom go OTD, by the way).
That's it.
I just saved you 5 hours to read this book.
Verdict: not recommended
"The Mountain Family"
2/5 stars
"If the love child of Pollyanna and Mary Poppins overwrote an implausible book....."
*******
This book is not worth a second read and that's because it probably wasn't really even worth a first read.
Two major reasons:
1. I don't know how much I believe that this happened.
These books that I find published on labels (Artscroll/Mesorah/Feldheim) are just a little bit over the top when they are giving a hagiography of some person-- and let's be clear that that's what that is, because if you did not know that no one was perfect you would not find it out from any of these type books.
Specifically, I have in mind the character of Avraham ben Avraham in the (eponymous) book by Selig Schanowitz.
It's not even clear whether or not "Avraham ben Avraham" existed, but the author gave such glowing descriptions of all the characters in the book and intricate details of their conversations (from a couple of centuries ago) that it makes me believe that this is another one of those stories /haggadaot that have been told so many times and so vividly that people forget that *they never happened*.
And the purpose of this story is is not really even to narrate a historical event, but to create a narrative about how the scales fell from the eyes of so many people when they decided to convert from Xtianity to Judaism.
Or to lionize this or that Rabbi.
The fact that so much $hit in this book does not go together is what makes me believe that it didn't happen:
**The author grows up in an upper middle class West Coast family, but she decides to marry into a family of hillbillies and gives birth to 11 children while living in houses that didn't even have running water(!).
What sane person does that?
It would be one thing if she had grown up using outhouses all her life and kept on using them, but the thing is that she didn't. (And how do you deal with sexual odors with no running water? You do kind of wonder that since she conceived many times under those circumstances.)
***(p.135) Living in a tent? And homeschooling her children while they lived in a tent? It also appears that she conceived her 10th child while living in that tent.
***The author also claims to have read "thousands of books" (p.145). But couldn't learn to speak Hebrew?
***(p.174) She claims that people accepted her kids into a Jewish Day School before conversion, but I have a gold standard conversion and one out of the three local schools in Jewish Detroit (Darchei Torah) did not accept my kids because they did not want blacks or converts there. Also, they put her child right in the appropriate grade even though all of them had been homeschooled and therefore none of them had had any of the Judaic content necessary.
***People just came out of the woodwork to buy plane tickets for her children to go and study abroad in Yeshiva, even though she had not yet converted. Also, there would be the issue of a court converting a minor who would live / be under the care of a parent who was not Jewish.
***The converting Rabbi told her that if she lived through a year of Jewish holidays then the conversion would be finished--even though I have never heard of a rabbi giving a deadline for conversion.
***(p.182) Chabad outsources anti-missionary work to her before she even converts?
***This woman doesn't fill out a single job application, there is no single page where she meets somebody to talk about a job in order to fund these grand schemes moving from Atlanta to Baltimore. (WITH NO JOB!)
Do these things really make sense? (I think a wise old Jewish woman by the name of Judge Judy said that "if it doesn't make sense, then that's because it's not true.")
***Then her parents move to Israel (under what right of return?) and decide to stay Xtians. AND she keeps in contact with them? (Orthodox communities are justifiably EXTREMELY suspicious, and if she had done that it's quite certain that she would not have been accepted as warmly as she claims.)
***(p.279) then her family turns out to be Crypto Jews. Of course. (Do you know anybody who *doesn't* think that they are a member of the Lost tribes / Crypto Jews?)
In DNA tests were available at the time of publishing this book in order to settle this issue.
*******
2. I'm also not sure if the authors were aware of this, but a heavy fraction of people who convert to Judaism of any type (and especially Orthodoxy) are frankly insane--lots of personal experience in this aspect that is beyond the scope of this review, as well as an uncomfortable book by Bernice Weiss. (Choosing to be Jewish.)
This is not a small matter to me, because I also happen to be an Orthodox convert and for every single consecutive person that I meet that wants to convert/ has converted AND needs to be institutionalized....... It really makes me wonder who I am.
And let's be clear that the protagonist of this book was frankly insane.
Maybe if the co-author had been aware, then she would have been sensitive enough to choose a better example.
Of the book:
1. The prose is: gushing, bloated, phantasmagoric, and implausible. (Sample sentence: "I was left out in the dark, pleading to gain admittance through the hallowed doors of Judaism, until that momentous day 6 months before, when I finally stepped through the portal of my destiny.")
2. About 4 to 5 hours of reading time
3. In a nutshell, the protagonist is raised in a deeply religious (they seemed to have seventh-day Adventist tendencies) upper middle class family in California.
She goes through 10 children living hand to mouth, divorces and moves to Jerusalem.
And then remarries and has a blended family with 17 children. (This severely handicapped husband was also able to sire 7 children; I guess he was fully functional in at least *one* way.)
She eventually has extended family in Israel (none of whom go OTD, by the way).
That's it.
I just saved you 5 hours to read this book.
Verdict: not recommended