Jerusalem Maiden is a story that has an intriguing premise, set in the pre-state of Israel during the Turkish and British occupation. Unfortunately, the novel fails to live up to its premise and becomes a poor cousin of Naomi Ragen’s books, where a woman chained in religious Judaism breaks free and finds love on the outside.
Esther Kaminsky seems to be more of an author’s mouthpiece than a fully formed character in her own right. Although we are her need for artistic freedom, we are denied a chance to gain insight in the world around her. Although I am not a religious person, I grew up around them and I can see that there is a genuine beauty that can be found in such a structured and holy life.
In fact, this book makes Hareidi Jews seem more like a joyless cult, filled with lecherous men and downtrodden women. Their lives are joyless and they seem to endure a cycle of birth, poverty, misery and death. There is no reason anyone would remain in such a life, unless they were masochistic. Carner fails to show why anyone would stay, when freedom was so close?
In fact, even among the most reactionary Jews, there is a beauty and majesty that needs to be shown alongside the abuse in order to truly create a full picture of the society. There are no examples of happy religious Jews, who love their life and see a purpose in it. There are only soldiers of God, who “seek to bring the Messiah†by having as many children as possible, living in destitution and breaking the spirits of their women as early as possible. The rabbis are narrow-minded and cruel, the fathers unheeding of their daughter’s happiness and selling them into marriage like chattel, and mothers who give birth till they die of exhaustion.
In sharp contrast, the gentiles in the story are noble and refined, elegant and educated. Any reader who looks into such a contrast would wonder if the author intended such a message that religious Jews are such craven creatures.
Sexism does exist in the religious world, and shocking examples of misogyny are still found today. Yet, in the book, there are no contrasting rabbis who see women as worth anything close to a man. In one telling scene, Esther is making Challah and is told to make sure the roles for the “girls†are small, because she has been taught that the men who sit around studying Torah need the nourishment more than the women doing the back breaking labor of taking care of the entire home. There is little love shown to any female in the book, and Esther is subject to emotional abuse from her mother on a continuing basis that leads up to a marriage that is horrifying in its sheer contempt for any happiness.
It is hard to give a book such a negative critique without listing some good points, but there was little to be found. There is little resolution to the plot, and the characters seem thinly written, more as symbols than actual living breathing people. In fact, it felt more like a soap opera than a deep introspection about the place of art and freedom in Judaism. The author has an axe to grind with Hareidei Jews, but fiction shouldn’t be a form of therapy.
One star for a good concept.
