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A review by rbruehlman
Shmutz by Felicia Berliner
3.0
Meh.
Shmutz was my first foray into reading about Hasidic Judaism. I know very little about Judaism and Hasidic Judaism even less so. Reading Shmutz definitionally means learning about Hasidic culture, which I found fascinating.
When I remove Hasidism from Shmutz, though, there was not a lot there for me to chew on. Raizl is addicted to porn. She watches it, again and again. She promises she won't. She breaks her promise. She chafes against marriage because she feels so weighted down by her dirty secret. She feels like a failure of a Jew and starts breaking rules of her religion and community, because if she's already committing one sin, why not another? What's one more?
I think the exploration of what makes someone turn away from a tightly-knit, rule-bound community is a deeply interesting topic. Raizl's consumption of bacon-egg-and-cheese sandwiches and jean-wearing make total sense to me; she was already sinning, for one, and the secular world presented a tempting world seemingly far less devoid of rules and therefore shame and obligation--a welcome respite from a world where everything is prescribed and dictated, and the wrong step means shaming both yourself and your family.
However, I found the porn addiction boring. It reflected the nature of an addict's behavior accurately, I guess--engage in the behavior, feel shame, swear it off, fall back into the pattern, rinse and repeat. But reading her engage in the behavior over and over and the ensuing shameful rumination nonetheless felt repetitive and got dull.
I also found Raizl's decision to get married and re-commit to her community a bit ... abrupt? I mean, I get it; I've also made very abrupt major decisions before to stop doing harmful thing X or to start doing helpful thing Y, after struggling for a long time to finally just do it. Not every decision someone comes to is a long, drawn out process where the ramp to improvement is a gentle predictable slope. Sometimes it's a 90-degree angle. Still, 90-degree life decisions don't make for very satisfying reading, or at least this one didn't. I finished the book and was left with this feeling of, "Well, okay?"
I dunno, I don't have opinions on her decision either way, but I just didn't think it was as interesting an emotional growth journey or analysis of what it means to be Hasidic as it could have been.
Shmutz was my first foray into reading about Hasidic Judaism. I know very little about Judaism and Hasidic Judaism even less so. Reading Shmutz definitionally means learning about Hasidic culture, which I found fascinating.
When I remove Hasidism from Shmutz, though, there was not a lot there for me to chew on. Raizl is addicted to porn. She watches it, again and again. She promises she won't. She breaks her promise. She chafes against marriage because she feels so weighted down by her dirty secret. She feels like a failure of a Jew and starts breaking rules of her religion and community, because if she's already committing one sin, why not another? What's one more?
I think the exploration of what makes someone turn away from a tightly-knit, rule-bound community is a deeply interesting topic. Raizl's consumption of bacon-egg-and-cheese sandwiches and jean-wearing make total sense to me; she was already sinning, for one, and the secular world presented a tempting world seemingly far less devoid of rules and therefore shame and obligation--a welcome respite from a world where everything is prescribed and dictated, and the wrong step means shaming both yourself and your family.
However, I found the porn addiction boring. It reflected the nature of an addict's behavior accurately, I guess--engage in the behavior, feel shame, swear it off, fall back into the pattern, rinse and repeat. But reading her engage in the behavior over and over and the ensuing shameful rumination nonetheless felt repetitive and got dull.
I also found Raizl's decision to get married and re-commit to her community a bit ... abrupt? I mean, I get it; I've also made very abrupt major decisions before to stop doing harmful thing X or to start doing helpful thing Y, after struggling for a long time to finally just do it. Not every decision someone comes to is a long, drawn out process where the ramp to improvement is a gentle predictable slope. Sometimes it's a 90-degree angle. Still, 90-degree life decisions don't make for very satisfying reading, or at least this one didn't. I finished the book and was left with this feeling of, "Well, okay?"
I dunno, I don't have opinions on her decision either way, but I just didn't think it was as interesting an emotional growth journey or analysis of what it means to be Hasidic as it could have been.