Between Paris and Williamsburg: “I Am Forbidden,” by Anouk Markovits
Zackary Sholem Berger2012Arts & CultureBooksReligionI Am Forbidden
By: Anouk Markovits
Hogarth, 320 pages
A man runs naked to the Aron Kodesh. A boy, after witnessing the slaughter of his family by the Romanian Iron Guard, is saved, to be raised as a Christian. In parallel: The Satmar Rebbe, in an open car, is within shouting distance of his Hasidim whom he does not or cannot save from extermination. This is national tragedy, theological failure.
It is the year 1939, in Maramures, Transylvania. 5-year-old Josef, his skullcap gone, his golden sidecurls shorn, is being raised by Fiorina, his family’s Christian maid. He has almost forgotten his Jewish origins when, several years later, he rescues a girl, Mila, whose parents are killed as they run to the Satmar Rebbe, whom they glimpse in an open train car. The rebbe will save them, they think, but instead the woman is shot; the man, still wearing his tefillin, is beaten to death in the town square. The Satmar rebbe, meanwhile, with aid from the Zionists, is on his way to safety in Switzerland.
Josef directs Mila to the home of a Satmar scholar, Zalman Stern, who later comes to retrieve Josef from his adoptive Christian mother and sends him on to yeshiva in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The Sterns settle in Paris, and Mila remains with them, raised as a daughter — and as a sister to another girl, Atara. The two girls share everything at first but follow very different paths, both eventually intertwined with Josef’s: Mila is drawn to religious fervor, messianic redemption, and Bible study, while Atara asks herself, at first tentatively, if it is selfish to live and think as she wishes.
Despite the story’s foundation in tragedy and religion, this is not a Chaim Potok book full of disputation. We are face-to-face with people and the structures they create to deny death, bring the Messiah, or understand loss. When Josef is retrieved by Stern back to the Jewish world from Fiorina’s protection, we are given to understand the small tragedy they both live through in the shadow of a larger one, sharing a moment of “losing all, of having already lost”–a moment a lesser writer would have overlooked.
The inner lives of the punctiliously Orthodox, with their suppressed desire, menstrual obsession, and fear of death, coexist in the same book (and sometimes on the same page) as the deep joy and brilliant light of communal celebrations and Torah study. We feel the desire for Messiah in Mila, as we are moved by Atara’s yearning “to think gratuitous human constructs.” We teeter back and forth, not between Jerusalem and Athens, but between Paris and Williamsburg. Markovits brings off this balancing act with skill and daring. Everyone is given their due. Instead of disrespect or easy judgment, there is generosity of spirit and delicacy of the pen.
Chasidim make their way through these pages from Transylvania, to Paris, to Williamsburg. They are matched, marry, bear children. Some leave the fold. Stereotypes are avoided: There are Simchas Torah dances, but there is also the enchantment of a Paris library, Atara’s illicit haunt, where “lamps of milk glass inside green shells cast bright ellipses of light on rustling pages.” There is joy abounding with great-grandchildren aplenty, but there is also the pain of Mila who cannot conceive. At the center of the tale is her momentous decision that upends generations. Here, it should be said, the plot takes a baroque turn. Disbelief must be actively suspended — but this is not a misstep so much as an instance of ecstatic overreaching.
This is a different set of walls and courtyards than the familiar Brooklyn-Manhattan axis. The concreteness comes from the Maramureş wood nettle, the glowering statuary and blossoming gardens of Paris, the nighttime voyages by rail. Because Markovits is French born — having published one novel in that language already — we get the Chasidic world of the United States viewed from across the Atlantic. In Paris, the Stern children are called sale juif, dirty Jew. In Brooklyn there is “kosherness splashed all over…Jews not afraid to advertise they [are] Jews, Jews reconstructing a world that never was before.”
As creator of this microcosm, Markovits’ most impressive feat of compression is to present two great moral questions in concrete Jewish terms that can resonate with any intelligent reader. The more familiar of these is the Holocaust. “Does the Lord stay to watch,” asks Atara, a skeptic even in seminary, “when children are burning?” It is a credit to the novel and its characters that even the director of the girls’ seminary of whom this question is asked does not have the chutzpah to answer it immediately.
The more difficult question involves repercussions of individual decisions, whether a community can judge violators by its own lights. In the Jewish terms of Markovits’ plot: how do you solve the problem of the mamzeres and her descendants? How can deceit be assimilated into the stories a family tells about itself? Are there boundaries that can be crossed, and then crossed back again in the other direction — keeping what was learned on the outside while finding a place at the Shabbos table? There are answers here, but the story, its characters, and the created world are primary.
This is a book absorbing as any midrash and as enlightening as a library. I feel its contribution immediately and powerfully, and am happy to have given my time to it. I recommend you do the same.
22 Responses
Very good review. I read the book and I think your commentary sums up what the reader takes away from the novel.
Like Zackary, I was definitely absorbed and enchanted by Markovits’ new novel, and ended up reading it in just two days (and wishing it could go on longer, oops). The span of time that the author adeptly covers, transitioning so smoothly between pivotal historical moments, from the Kastner train departure to the 1968 Parisian student strikes to 9/11 to the present day – is just incredible because these moments so profoundly effect the lives of her characters in clever ways that convey urgency and complexity, and drive the story forward.
I agree that morality is the underlying theme of the novel, which is expressed by various characters as peity, duty, rebellion, etc. What compelled me even moreso was the inherent sense of inner conflict that each character seemed to struggle with – even Atara, who resolutely leaves her family and her community, struggles at the end of the book to be recognised by her father. Most interestingly, these compulsions are not always framed as a precise allegience to personal religious conviction, but rather to culture, tradition, and social/familial expectation (which are of course inextricably linked to Judiasm). That is not to say that the characters are unpious (haha!), because most of them are certainly concerned with peity, but rather that they are often consumed by the affects (and effects) of a pious life – most prominently, the ongoing theme of forbiddenness, which lends a heavy film of romantic tragedy to the story.
Markovits paints even the most tragic and contrary characters in the novel as beautiful, creating a space where there are no “good guys” or “bad guys” – even opinions on Joel Teitelbaum are (realistically) conflicted and considered from all angles vis a vis different characters’ experiences and opinions. The author’s creation of a space of conflict resonates the idea of forbiddenness and highlights the frustration that can be inherent in adhereing to a static set of moral codes (futher examples including: Josef’s ultimately deadly inner turmoil over the paternal origin of his daughter; Zalman taking extreme measures not to accidentally masturbate, etc).
All in all, this is a beautiful story, a slightly fantastical take on history, community, family, peity, and culture. I believe Zackary is correct – the story takes up the issue of crossing boundaries, and then hiding the fact that these boundaries have been crossed. I would add that instead of resolving this, however, Markovits points out that transgression is almost impossible, and that perhaps – just perhaps – this has nothing to do with Godliness.
What a review. Recommendation taken!
The article on The Tablet was very interesting as well. Congrats to Shulem on his book contract.
Where do you see that Shulem got a book contract , and what is his book going to be about?
A brilliant review of a brilliant , heart rending novel . While one may argue the ‘facts’ and (mis)representations of halacha, the dialectic between joy and terror is as inspiring as it is uplifting.
Velvel: in the Bio of Zachary Berger above, there’s a link for Tablet Magazine. That Mr Deen has a book contract is mentioned in that article but it doesn’t explain anything further. I guess we’ll have to wait and see! No pressure at all on the writer, right?
Please. The dustball in the corner of my room has more substance than this book.
Still waiting for the writer who is equal to the subject.
Beautiful sword you wield CM.Pure kotzk.
“Please. The dustball in the corner of my room has more substance than this book.”
How bout writing that book yourself?
Kotzk – I take it this isn’t a good thing? As an OnTD BT I don’t speak Yiddish, nor am I conversant with Chasdish dynasties. (though I am partial to the Berdichever Rebbe).
Writing that book myself? Nah, I’m not a writer. I didn’t know this is a requirement for expressing an opinion.
I truly apologize and regret my harshness, but I stand by my assessment.
Good Shabbos
Quite the contrary; the brilliance of the rebbe of kotzk is that he used a minimum of words to express great insight…
….which I thought you did masterfully in your 1 line book review. Loved it!
Btw The Berditchever was the exact opposite of the kotzker in his manner of glorifying the inglorious, whereas the kotzker would’nt budge from his truth… and was not shy about expressing his opinion.
On TDBT? Whats with all the labels already?! Good though, It’s so much funner to corrupt you.
Kidding:)
: ( :
(I bring this down from my son – credit where credit is due)
I downloaded this book thanks to your review and am grateful that I did. I Am Forbidden is a beautiful, profound novel + poem. I was dazzled by the characters and vantage points that it wove together. I kept slowing down out of fear that it would end. I know the book is starting to be read by frum people and I wonder what will result?
I Am Forbidden captures the frum world and then rises above it into literature.
One of the greatest lines:
“Jews reconstructing a world that never was before.”
Zachary, my daughter pointed this piece out to me. We both met you in Baltimore this past Sunday and my daughter made the connection!
I read it this afternoon/evening and had a few thoughts. I initially put off reading this book. When I picked it up I made a pact with myself: if the word ‘kesem’ or ‘bedika’ appeared I would drop it into the ash can. They did, I didn’t.
Nu, I have a hearty distaste for books aimed at secular readers that fetishize practices on the page and then attract the rag tag collection of Judith Butler acolytes who are particularly ignorant but amazingly confident. Those assembly line (ignorant with authority) academic feminists who think that they are remotely equal to the task of understanding women in the Orthodox community. Well, fools rush in where angels fear to tread.
Honestly, what raised this book for me is the architecture; the overall structure is quite smart and seamless. Some very fine joinery and carpentry going on and I am not speaking about plot. (I am not a plot or even a character driven reader.) I like craftsmanship, to see dialogue dovetail into description and maintain distinct yet similar language. To see descriptions that function within the pattern. This book had that. So I was both sad and curious to see that none of the reviews I read noted that. Which speaks to several possibilities:
1. Reviewers are no longer better readers that any other reader.
Or, 2. In certain types of novels, first and foremost novels by women and very much about women, structure is not considered as strongly as narrative—women tell stories, men construct them. Reviews of novels by women often focus on character and plot rather than the really hard stuff of a novel.
3. When given a slice of an other culture that is clichéd (and it is clichéd here and I am not saying that as fault; when dealing with a culture so based in conformity, clichés are the description), they do not dare say anything—because culture is important—really, really important, meaning it matters a lot. And if that sounds simple-minded, it is. Their mistake is that clichés of one culture seem fresh and honest when viewed by another.
We have seen some of this before albeit in different guises. On the page, the zealot is often driven by both sexual and violent urges; the character, not a moral relativist, is still painted as such to appeal to the reader, a dyed in the wool moral relativist, who traipses through the grey zone always noting that it is neither black nor white. To which I want to say—so nice of you to notice. The self-inflicted bondage that opens this book and the nocturnal emission that it was meant to thwart are not moral failings but an extreme example of how heartily biological reponses are avoided—forestalled. Yet both foretell a moral question—the blood lust (knife sharpening) that defines and houses faith, devotion and religious practice. So In the grey zone the zealot is immoral… And that, dear readers, is a judgment and not grey.
As a thesis about extreme religious lifestyles—well, it may be true and may not be, it depends on where you are sitting. But once religious belief is framed and narrated as a set of constraints meant to reign in sexual and violent urges (and framed at every turn with a high maze of boundaries used to control) then it is not hard to pull out the tiny straw and send it all tumbling down. Everything, then, is a corrupt heap and has to do control and conformity. Of course, the zealot also begets the apikores, and to me this apikores fails as a character on very practical grounds. Simply put, there is no deep question that a teenager can ask that compels me to care. Can a teenager say I do not want this life I want that one? Yes, they can. Do I buy that the character’s mind was so deep and probing that she stumped the albeit-dumb-ass 11th grade Rebbe and left? No. But the writer realizes this herself, and that may be why the character fades for much of the novel. The writer “gets” that the question itself is the answer. And having to go is often just that simple. Ironically, this reminds me of how Milton, in his attempt to justify God’s ways to man, lost control of Satan on the page and G-d was so really boring. Anyway, the zealot has his opposite: an equally familiar cliché, the simple pious Yid, infinitely less interesting on the page than the libido driven zealot but his religiosity and devotion turn into a lifetime of penance, self-flagellation, starvation—not unlike a penitent Catholic saint—who ate only the pus from the weeping sores of beggars, and yes, starved to death, but what an elevated death it was. The question: were they holy or were they suffering some severe pathology? Did the religion drive them over the edge? Yes. So, given free reign and allowed to follow it’s own natural course religious belief destroys the believers, at least some of them. That seems to be the premise underlying much of the narrative and is in some ways the exact same question Hawthorne posed: For how many generations are the sins of the father visited upon the children?
Certainly there are no shortages of casualties from religious systems. Hasidim dancing aside, the main intellectual rigor given to observance in here is that it is often “complicated.” The writer more than suggests it is in fact punitive—but this goes unmentioned. My initial concerns as a woman who tries to write with some amount of honesty from within the frum community remain—’bedika’ and ‘kesumim’. The issue of taharas hamishpacha is prevalent and only superficially mentioned by reviewers—as menstruation—whatever. Here is a fact: in the secular literary world, mention mensuration and expect a prurient but superficial reading, especially from feminists—because they aint all that open minded as they would like to think about women writers and the work they produce. And this writer and this book were very shortchanged and serve as an example of how women writers are read as superficial storytellers rather than people that actually construct novels—just like the big boys.
B.A. — What a brilliant and fantastically written review! Thank you for sharing your thoughts.
I second what Shulem said – B.A. it is clear that you are far more than the standard Frum reader and reviewer and I hope to read more of your thoughts in the future.
While I still think this book was superficial and a puffed dustball this review/comment really brought up and framed some very interesting points.
B.A. — A review that’s truly a review; not a summary, nor a pint-sized version of the book. Bravo!
make fun of the rebbeh ass-holes, make fun but the worms await smarter burnt out cynics
I’m in the middle of reading this book. How true is what they write about the escape of satmar rebbe?
Lure of literature im am not sure why it is permitted to read this book, it is assur because of lo sasuru, see the post on grestudentblog.blogspot in which the guy there dicusses this