This novel by Eve Harris (nicely narrated by Jan Cramer in my audio-version) appeared in 2013, and was long-listed for the Man Booker Prize that same year.

It is a nuanced and sympathetic portrayal of a community of strictly orthodox Jews, Charedi, living in northwest London. I needed to do a little homework to find out how they fit into the overall Jewish landscape. Not all Jews, of course, identify as religious. Those that do, we're told, can be divided into progressive (reform/liberal), conservative, and orthodox. This last category further divides into modern orthodox and Charedi (and the Charedi can again be divided into two streams, Hassidic and Lithuanian).

The Charedi are committed to observing very strict religious practices, and preserving the purity of the community. Under Harris's guidance we learn about kosher food, acceptable clothing, the requirement for married women to wear wigs to cover their hair, the bedroom etiquette of married couples (periods are a big deal); the banishment of outside sources such as television and the internet; the keeping of the Sabbath; and the arranging of marriages.

The community is distinctive, but the essence of the story could also, you feel, apply to strict Muslim, Christian, or other groups in many other localities.


Iran, 2000. Here women's dress is a matter of law, not just custom. Some of us really don't wear scarves well...


Myanmar, 2012. What women wear is an object of concern -- too much concern? -- for many religions, it seems...


Indonesia, 2014. Note it's the same scarf as the one above, 14 years later... I still have it. Iranian silk is very hardy...

Through Harris's account, we witness the warmth of Charedi fellowship and mutual support, the joy of worship and celebration, and the reassurance of being part of something that lays down to the letter how you have to behave. But we also observe the stifling nature of such a lifestyle, the toll that adherence to the rules takes (especially on women), the fear of displeasing a demanding God, and (for some) the ever-present and corrosive doubt -- is this really how God wants people to live...? (An interesting reflection of these two strands can be found in this account of how a Charedi community was affected by the arrival of covid.)

These different facets are illustrated through Harris's range of characters.

There are Rivka and Chaim, for example. They are Jews who start from a secular background and become "frum" (pious), drawn in by the radiance of the community they encounter in Jerusalem and the infectious exuberance of its worship. Later, as the wife of Rabbi Chaim, and universally identified as such (she is the "rebbetzin"), Rivka sometimes struggles with, and resents, the narrowness of their lives. But what she really can't hack is the refusal to deal with emotional hurt. The unhealed grief of losing their first child is brought dramatically to the surface when she suffers a miscarriage. And no-one is there for her, it seems. We leave her at the end striking out on her own, determined to lead a new, independent life, but we know this is going to be extraordinarily difficult.

Then there are Mrs Gelbmann and Mrs Levy, respectively the matchmaker and the ambitious mother, and also the comic turns of the book. There's Mrs Kaufman, Chani's mother, worn out from endless child-bearing and -rearing. There's Avromi, the son of Rivka and Chaim, who has a fling with a non-Jewish girl, but gives her up for the sake of his religion, his family, and his community.

And there are Chani and Baruch themselves. Painfully young (19 and 20, respectively), shy, gawky, and nervous -- because utterly uninformed -- they move in very short order from negotiation to courtship to proposal to marriage. Their wedding night is a bit of a disaster. But they'll be OK, you feel. They're both responsible and caring, and up for communicating. They'll figure things out.   

To me, the book comes across as a balanced portrayal of the laudable and the problematic within the community. But then I'm an outsider...

More worryingly, perhaps, the author is also an outsider. I guess that nagged me all the way through what was an enjoyable and informative listen. Can you really write convincingly about a community you've only seen from the outside?

Harris was born of Israeli-Polish parents in London, and drew material for her book from her experience of teaching for a while in a Charedi school. Her account of this time is illuminating, and she admits that as a secular Jew, she was unprepared for what she was committing herself to. The girls inhabit "a tiny bubble constructed for them by their community". No internet, no radio, no TV, no unsanctioned publications. No jeans, no makeup. And definitely no boyfriends.

The recognition of the good and bad sides of this environment clearly informs the novel. On the one hand, the girls are "vigilantly protected from the hyper-sexualisation of the modern world", with the result that their childhood is "preserved and extended to its full limits, not curtailed by worldly knowledge of adult things". This innocence is beautiful, she finds: "They were vivacious and lively; not downtrodden, meek or mild, but bursting with life, and generally very happy."

On the other hand, the whole curriculum is rigorously censored: "Whole pages of the biology textbook were glued together or ripped out. Art books containing pictures of Botticelli or Michelangelo nudes were covered in white stickers to block out breasts or genitalia."


That sentence reminded me of this picture, taken in a Yogya mall, 2015

Needless to say, the selection of English literature texts that were not deemed "impure" was highly limited.

Her observations of the large families are also nuanced. In the book, Chani -- fed up of being one of a multitude at home -- vows that she won't have more than four children, and Baruch agrees (although neither of them has much idea of how this can be accomplished). But Harris appreciates the rationale, and sees how it ties in with the quest for purity: "Charedi couples have as many children as they can, because the Torah commands that you go forth and multiply, but there's also a deeper, more poignant reason. Behind that extraordinary Charedi insularity, behind everything they do, is a dark shadow -- the holocaust, Hitler. They'll never forget, and many of those who become Charedi are the children of survivors. They want to make up for the six million who were murdered and they do that by having a lot of children. Their fear of interacting with the secular world stems from the same thing. To outsiders it seems extreme, but they believe that 'if we let our children out with people who are not Jews they'll lose their spiritual purity, they will turn away from God, and we'll be doing Hitler's job for him'." (The picture at the top of this post, by the way, is from the Jewish Refugee Museum in Shanghai, 2018.)

Is this careful balance enough, though, to replace a genuinely inside perspective? 

For some, Harris is successful, and "it is a testament to her compassion that, although she is not 'of them,' she understands that world as thoroughly as Jane Austen understood hers". For others, her book "offers a voyeuristic look" at the Charedi community, and because "the players' inner lives remain a mystery... the removed narrative voice and mysterious pivotal choices confirm that the novel is written by, and for, outsiders".

It's hard to find middle ground here. On the one hand, the nature of the community means we're unlikely to ever get a genuinely inside account. On the other hand, some might feel that Harris is too kind. As she sees it, the majority of the girls in the school where she worked comply with the regulations because they're at peace with them: "Their sense of family, community and friendship are incomparable. They know what is expected of them and they're content."


Indonesia, 2018. No courting in the park...

Eve Sacks, by contrast, offers a challenging counterpoint. The product of a modern orthodox home (remember the classifications above?), Sacks deals with members of the Charedi community who are trying to escape. One of the women she is hosting, a mother of four, says: "Women are moulded not to ask questions. If we drive a car, we’ll get a phone call from our children’s school, complaining we are being immodest... I do a brilliant juggling act. No-one knows that I hate the schools. On the surface, everyone is very friendly, but this is just a way of keeping you under control." This is presumably the mindset that Rivka is running away from. Sacks also questions the whole ritual of family-sanctioned match-making, seeing the results as varying degrees of "forced marriage".

In sum, then, I enjoyed the book, and very much appreciated the care it took to provide balance, score no cheap points, and generally do no harm. But I couldn't help wondering if it was actually attempting to do the impossible.


Kuching, 2019. A bit of exclusivism here too, no?