At the same time, we have relied for too long on people disaffected with the Orthodox world to produce an Orthodox literature that verges on caricature. Their characters, ostensibly spiritually motivated, never show anything resembling an inner life or concern for others. For me it’s hard to get inside such flat characters, and I always had this problem – even before I became interested in Judaism. Sometimes there is not even much of a setting in these novels, because a steady parade of weird religious Jews is seen to be sufficient.
I don’t think it is. I think these books would be better if the authors would allow for people who were also trying to live by their ideals – not just those who are gossips, mentally unstable, or drug addicts. To me the most enduring fiction includes both good and bad characters, and of course everything in between.
In “As You Like It, ” there is a wonderful banished Duke who is a real saint. There are also characters who are corrupt or cynical, and then there are your basic strugglers and yearners. We needed that noble Duke to understand what the cynics were against. The Duke allows us to empathize with and enjoy the melancholic comment, “All the world’s a stage.” Or consider The Brothers Karamazov with the deeply good priest, without whom the hypocrites and even the strugglers and yearners would seem two-dimensional.
For whatever reason, many writers today like to create immoral haredi and newly-religious characters. The truth is, I don’t know why. Perhaps because they are not from these worlds, they fail to appreciate the idealism that’s there. Or perhaps it’s because, as Ms. Mirvis has admitted, nowadays “there is a great deal of discomfort with religiosity, and I have to admit, I feel it myself as well.”
My claim that newly-religious writers are revolutionizing Jewish fiction is not based on their level of religious observance, nor any “message” in their books. Rather, it is rooted in their ability to navigate the misrepresented Orthodox world as insiders – i.e., those who do not carry “discomfort with religiosity”- while bringing an “outside” literary sensibility. Never before have we had a novelist like Risa Miller, who is the winner of a PEN award and also a disciple of the Bostoner Rebbe. For the first time, we have books that capture the complexity of the Orthodox world, and do it well.
Do authors outside the haredi world have the right to create literature about that world? Absolutely. Must we agree that such literature is all good? I’m not so sure. If anything reeks of “Soviets” or “mullahs,” it is the position that one must approve of certain literature just because the group it derides is outside the protective walls of political correctness.
Tova Reich’s 1995 story “The Lost Girl” (published originally in Harper’s) pitted a girl who was lost on a field trip against a haredi school that was essentially indifferent to her. “Look,” their principal tells a reporter, “We went into the woods with 300 girls and came out with 299…on a final exam that would give you a score of about 99.7 out of 100 – a sure A, maybe even an A plus.”
Now, this is really funny, but why? Mainly because any time a girl is lost in the real Orthodox world, an efficient network mobilizes a large army of searchers with flashlights and gear. Just one year before Reich’s story, in fact, a 14-year-old Brooklyn girl disappeared in a Connecticut state park on a school outing, and the local search folks were bowled over by the busloads of yeshiva students from different states who dropped everything to find this girl.