A review by sarkatas
Shmutz by Felicia Berliner

3.0

I’m deeply conflicted about Schmutz. I think all depictions of the colour and shade of Chasidic families are welcome, though I know this would absolutely be trafe. As a girl who grew up in a conservative Modern Orthodox household, this book felt both familiar and entirely foreign but not in the ways I thought it might.

I think a lot of this is in the fact that a lot of the time, while I read, I could feel the intended audience being non-Jewish people. That’s totally fine (and will presumably be the majority of people reading the book) but it made the character feel a little inauthentic. The book felt heavy with explanation and entry points in a way that felt, to myself as a Jewish reader, a bit over the mark.

I also found myself really thrown out of the reality every time I caught something inconsistent with halacha or chasidism - it really threw me off centre. It only happened a couple of times (a reflection of a Jewish author writing about Judaism) but it did throw me.

so I truly don’t know whether I really liked this book, but I certainly found it interesting.