I BOOKS
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KIM ZETTER
Special to The Jewish News
n ultra-Orthodox Jew-
ish romance? Some
cynics might observe
that the former automatical-
ly precludes the latter. Yet
readers are touting author
Naomi Ragen's first novel
Jephte's Daughter, a best-
seller, as the progenitor of a
new writing genre.
It tells the story of
Bathsheva Ha-Levi, the
beautiful, affluent, American-
born daughter of Abraham
Ha-Levi, the sole surviving
member of a 300-year-old
European hasidic dynasty.
In an effort to revive the
Ha-Levi scholarship, Abra-
ham arranges a match for his
only child with a brilliant and
handsome Haredi (ultra-
Orthodox) scholar in Jerusa-
lem. But when her new hus-
band, Isaac, proves to be a
cold and cruel taskmaster,
abusing and subjugating her,
Bathsheva seeks to terminate
the union.
Her family and community,
though. place greater value
on shalom bayit (a peaceful
household) than on personal
happiness. and repeatedly try
to pacify her complaints.
Fearing that her infant son
will be taken away if she
presses the issue. she simu-
lates suicide and flees to Lon-
don with her child.
There she falls in love. But
her problems are exacerbated
by the facts that she is still
married, and the young man
is not Jewish. What's more,
he is a divinity student "this
close" to earning his white
collar.
Naomi Ragen, an American
living in Israel, agrees that
her story might be problem-
atic for some readers. Not-
withstanding the suicide-
deception scene and the inter-
faith relationship, some
readers might not accept an
ultra-Orthodox character
with romantic feelings.
Actually, Ragen glosses
over all of these problems.
The romance is clean and
pure, the suicide is not a real
suicide — although Bath-
sheva's deception is real
enough — and the soon-to-be
priest turns out to have a few
surprises in his family tree.
All of this, Ragen explains
in partial defense of a too-pat
happily-ever-after ending, is
part of genre-writing, which is
Naomi Ragen: too hard on the ultra-Orthodox?
Orthodoxy Meets
The Romance Novel
Naomi Ragen says her popular novel,
gephte's Daughter,' combines romance literature
and sensitivity to Judaism.
what Jephte's Daughter is
meant to be.
Ragen is quite open about
the fact that she made liter-
ary compromises to ensure
the book's publication. She
admits to using fictional tech-
niques — like making Bath-
sheva's love interest a candi-
date for priesthood — in order
to increase the plot value and
add interest. And passages in
which Bathsheva dwells on
her own beauty are typical of
romance writing in which the
heroine is nearly always a
model of perfection. But, she
says, all of this allows her to
take more literary license on
her next book, now that she
has the attentions of an agent
and publisher. Not to mention
a very large audience, who are
eagerly waiting for whatever
she'll produce next. Jephte's
Daughter is, after all, a very
good read.
The book has been well re-
ceived by Jewish and non-
Jewish readers and was
chosen by both the Book of
the Month Club and the
Jewish Book Club. It was
recently released in England
with much success, and is
"You can't write a
book with any
sense of reality to
it if everyone in it
is a tzaddik"
scheduled for release in
Australia, South Africa and
even Finland, where it is cur-
rently undergoing transla-
tion.
Yet, ironically, readers in
Israel — where Ragen lives
with her family — will never
see the book in Hebrew.
Ragen turned down offers for
a Hebrew translation and
even a movie because she was
afraid of losing control of the
material. Not to mention her
concern over how the Haredi
community might react to
her depiction of it, particular-
ly since the story is based,
although loosely, on a real in-
cident which occurred in the
Jerusalem Orthodox com-
munity a few years ago when
a young woman found herself
in similar circumstances.
How does Ragen know so
intimately the details of the
ultra-Orthodox community?
Because she herself is a
modern Orthodox woman liv-
ing very close to the roots of
her story in Jerusalem's
Ramot neighborhood.
Although the skeleton of
the story may be based on
fact, Ragen, who is in her ear-
ly forties, says that her
characters are fictional com-
posites of herself, her im-
agination and people she
knows. (She didn't know the
real-life Bathsheva or her hus-
band, although they lived in
the same neighborhood.)
This, perhaps, is why she is so
insistent about the truthful-
ness of Bathsheva's thoughts
and emotions.
"Every young girl, Ortho-
dox or not, realizes at a
certain point that she is
becoming a woman, and if she
is honest with herself, she
delights in her own body,"
Ragen says. "Women are
women. Bathsheva is not all
positive. She's a spoiled kid —
rich, vain, foolish in many
ways. But within the confines
of the book she grows up."
Ragen, like Bathsheva,
grew up in a religious, yet per-
missive, environment. She
lived in Far Rockaway, a
neighborhood of Queens, New
York, and attended the
Hebrew Institute of Long
Island — an Orthodox day
school — until high school. At
Brooklyn College she majored
in English. Her junior year
she married husband Alex
who was studying for a
master's degree in computer
technology at NYU. A year
later, in 1971, they im-
migrated to Israel.
The Ragens have four chil-
dren, the oldest, a 17-year-old
girl, is now doing Sherut
Leumi (national service for
religious girls, in lieu of army
service.)
Naomi Ragen earned a
master's in English literature
at the Hebrew University and
her first writing was an arti-
cle in the Jerusalem Post, in
1972, about her immigrant
neighborhood, Sanhedria
Murhevet, which had no
buses and no phones. She
then wrote for several years
for Hadassah magazine.
In 1982, she and her hus-
band moved the family to
California for a three-year
hiatus while they waited for
a new, larger apartment to be
built in Israel.
Her husband quickly found
work in the Silicon Valley
computer industry. Ragen
took a well-paid job as grant
writer for Santa Clara Univer-
sity, a Jesuit Catholic institu-
tion, whose president was a
priest.
When the monotony of
grant writing proved too
much, she decided to write a
novel. The spark that led her
to write this particular novel
was the story of that young
girl in Jerusalem who com-
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
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