PicoBlog

(This review contains spoilers.)

Brazen: My Unorthodox Journey from Long Sleeves to Lingerie is the much-awaited memoir by Julia Haart, star of Netflix show ‘My Unorthodox Life.’ The book is billed as a triumphant feminist story of a woman who escaped a fundamentalist community- the ultra-Orthodox yeshivish world- to the freedom of modern, secular America.

However, the act of writing reveals more truths than we intend. Upon reading the book, I was far more sympathetic to Julia Haart than I had been when watching the show. She comes across as the intelligent, creative woman that was stifled within the confines of her repressive community. However, a second layer also emerges. This is the story of a woman who did not experience parental love or spousal love and strongly desired validation and love. She decided to achieve it through shining in every other possible way- through maintaining her physical beauty, cooking delectable dishes and becoming a renowned Judaic Studies teacher. She also decided to achieve it through choosing to parent in a fundamentally different manner from how her parents chose to parent- leading her to become enmeshed with her children. Julia views herself as a role model for women, and believes that she is “dangerous” because she is a “woman who left and not only survived but succeeded” (VIII). In her words, “My story doesn’t fit the narrative of anyone who wants to use religion as an excuse to make women subservient to men. My very existence is a serious threat” (VIII).

This is not the takeaway I drew. Julia does not acknowledge character flaws in this memoir- which makes it very different from the style of memoir I like best. Other memoirs focused on exiting fundamentalist communities such as Educatedby Tara Westover, Unfollow by Megan Phelps-Roper and All Who Go Do Not Returnby Shulem Deen show a level of self-awareness that Julia does not possess. While Julia does grapple mightily with guilt, it is all guilt inspired by religion, never because she acknowledges that a choice she made, of her own free will, was actually wrong. The closest she gets is when she tells us that she went wrong because she “ignored her inner voice” or “trusted the wrong people,” the kind of false answer one gives an interviewer who asks you what your greatest weakness is. Julia does make choices that I view as cruel, and she does not show any remorse or regret for them. Perhaps she can’t. Perhaps she is incapable of showing weakness to the world, allowing for true culpability, and for us as her audience to view her as less than amazing in every way. To me, that is a sad outcome. A truly self-confident and self-sufficient person can face themselves and acknowledge who they are, take responsibility for their choices, and recognize their own flaws. Julia has not done this.

Important note: My copy of the book abruptly jumped from page 246 to 279. I am not sure if all the books have this printing error, or if it only my copy. Due to this, it is possible I lack some important information.

Here are the pieces I will explore in this review- and how they pertained to Julia’s journey. The main takeaway is that her story is more complicated than “from Monsey to mogul” or “from frumkeit [religious Jewish observance] to fashion.” The lack of love that permeates her life is a significant factor in her unhappiness.

• Family Dysfunction

• Romantic & Sexual Love

• The Bais Yaakov Ideal

• Enmeshment with Children

• Character Flaws

Julia’s parents were Russian immigrants who had advanced degrees. Julia herself was a gifted child who tested at genius-level on her IQ test (11). Having moved to Austin, Texas, the family was exposed to Lubavitch emissaries who wanted to teach the more about the Jewish religion. Julia’s mother was especially enamored, and it was her choice that led the entire family to become frum [religiously observant.]

Unfortunately, Julia’s mother was not someone who was given to demonstrating love for her children- let alone for Julia. In Julia’s words, despite her mother having babies from age 21 to age 46:

The real irony is that my mother doesn’t like babies and children. She never took care of her own. That was left to me. I mothered them so much that when my sisters and brothers found out I was getting married and moving out of the house, they all packed their stuff and wanted to know where “we” were moving to. When I say they called me Mommy, it’s not hyperbole.

-57

Julia describes a situation that is demonstrative of the level of family dysfunction/ neglect she grew up with.

That summer, the summer of 1987, I was sixteen, and my parents decided they wanted to go on vacation- by themselves. Since they weren’t going to be home, they saw no reason to pay the cleaning lady to stay, so she left as well. So my parents left me, at sixteen, with $200 and five children under the age of six and flew to Israel to vacation. Chana was six, Yitz was five, Naomi was three, Yoni was two, and Chaviva had just been born. She was a few months old. Sorah came over and tried to spend as much time as she could with me, but after a few days, her family left for vacation, andd so I remained, all alone. Yechiel would drop in unannounced with groceries, or just a kind word and a smile that said, Your life sucks worse than mine.

I cannot begin to describe the bedlam. The day after my parents left, Yoni came down with some kind of stomach virus and proceeded to give it to all the kids. I had five vomiting, crying, fevered children. I spent the next two days cleaning up projectile vomit and trying to calm down five sick kids who wanted their actual parents. I called my mother, crying and overwhelmed, and her reply was “You’re perfectly capable. Just take care of them and leave me alone. I deserve a vacation.” That was it. No kind words. No “Oh, honey, I’m so sorry, you’re so amazing for letting us get some vacation time.”

I don’t even know why I bothered. I think I was scared because Chaviva was just a newborn, and I was afraid she would die. Those nights I was too afraid to even try to sleep- afraid she would choke on her vomit and die, and that I would be responsible for her death.

It was two days of pure, unadulterated torture in the middle of one of the hottest summers that New York had had in years. All humid and sticky…wet heat that clung to your skin like slimy tentacles. Finally, everyone stopped vomiting, and I thought that perhaps things would go back to quasinormal. No such luck. All of a sudden, the whole house was blanketed in darkness and the air conditioner stopped humming.

The kids started crying because they were frightened, hot and miserable. I had no candles and just one flashlight, so I went downstairs and reset the circuit breaker. We had a few minutes of blessed respite before the electricity went off again. Back down I went, only to have it turn off again five minutes later. Leaning against the basement wall in frustration and desperation, I noticed something odd. The wall was burning hot. It felt like I was touching a cooktop.

I called our neighbor, and he came over, and I corralled all the pajamaed kids to his house. He called in a friend who was an electrician to check the circuit breaker. What the electrician told me terrified me. He said that had I turned on the switch just one more time, I would have, in all probability, blown up the house. There were some loose wires in the wall that had severely overheated, and it would have triggered an electrical fire. Had I not leaned against that wall and felt the heat, we would all be dead. For the next few days, we sat in the sweltering heat and darkness until the wiring was fixed. I was shaken for a long time. My responsibility for all these little lives weighed heavily on me.

The kids were tired, scared, distraught, and just generally unhappy, and they let me know it. Even thinking about it now, thirty years later, I’m still filled with that sense of dread…that impossibly heavy weight. When I heard the sound of my parents’ voices as they returned, I felt this huge wave of relief. They were home, and I hadn’t killed anyone. I had managed to keep all my siblings alive.

-page 58

My husband grew up in Hasidic Boro Park. He is one of seven. His mother is one of twelve. No one he knows would leave a sixteen-year-old alone with five kids for two weeks while they traveled to Israel on a vacation. This has nothing to do with religion, and everything to do with family dysfunction.

There are many other examples of this in the memoir. Here are a few.

We were at the age when every girl in my class was having a bat mitzvah. This was not the Modern Orthodox version of a bat mitzvah; there were no DJs or dancing. But everyone did have a dinner with rabbis speaking about girls becoming women and having to be even more tznius [modest]. It was still an occasion.

I waited and waited for my parents to remember my bat mitzvah was coming up. Finally, during Passover, on the night of my birthday, my father turned to me, and said, “Hey, isn’t it your birthday tonight? How old are you turning?” I tried so hard not to cry, but I know my voice betrayed my hurt as I said, “I’m twelve.” My parents looked at each other and laughed about how they had completely forgotten. So, the day after Passover, they made me call my classmates to invite them to a bat mitzvah that Sunday at my house. It was outside on the porch, and my parents bought pizza. That was it for my bat mitzvah. There is a picture of me from that day, and my eyes look so sad that it hurts me now to look at it. Although I never complained to my parents, and I never cried, it hurt to have been forgotten. These things take on a huge importance when you’re young and all your friends and everyone you know is celebrated on that day, and you know you’re just an afterthought. It hurt, but I hid it well.

-page 31

Julia’s parents also expected her to wake up at 6am on Shabbat morning and take the kids downstairs and play with them so that they could sleep late. Julia served everyone breakfast, put the dishes in the sink, would clean up lunch, play with the kids, and put them down for a nap. She would have some time to read a book, change the kids when they woke up, pray, feed them dinner, clean that up, set the table for the third meal of Shabbat, serve that, clean that up, and put the kids to sleep. Once Shabbat was over, she washed every single dish. She also cleaned the kitchen floor (which had to be done by getting down on her hands and knees and washing it with a cloth.)

After all this, we get this scene.

Maybe God was happy with me, but my mother was not. She walked into the kitchen, and she looked at the spotless counters, the clean sinks, and saw that all the dishes had been not only washed but also dried and put away. She walked quietly around the entire room, looking into all the corners, checking under the table, and finally stopped by the oven. She told me to come over and pointed to a speck on the floor under the oven doors. She looked at me with disappointment in her eyes. “You missed a spot,” she told me. “Can’t you ever do anything properly?” She looked at me, daring me to cry, to act out.

I was devastated. I just wanted one word of praise, one thank you. She stood watching me, waiting for a reaction, for me to say something wrong or inappropriate, so she could censure me further. I felt the tears gathering behind my eyes, yet when I looked in her face, I realized that that would give her the power. That was the moment I made a decision that would stand me in good stead my whole life. Never let them see you cry.

-pages 32-33

Oldest siblings, especially girls, do help out in Haredi [ultra-Orthodox] families. And yes, sometimes their parents, especially their mothers, are harried or forgetful. But these scenes are something else. The way this mother relates to her daughter is utterly cold- and more than that, mean. Julia internalizes the message that nothing she can do will earn her the love she so desperately wants. Once again, this is not a religious issue. This is a family dysfunction issue.

Things get worse as Julia comes of marriageable age. Julia turned down several matches. Then along came a man her parents felt was suitable. Julia did not want to go out with him again due to a situation where she had felt abandoned by him after they had gone out on a date. Her parents badgered her into continuing, making her feel “so guilty and childish and cruel” (97). So she gave in.

After the vort, Julia wanted to break the engagement. She explains, “I was told by my parents in no uncertain terms that, since I was a ba’alas teshuva [someone who was born irreligious and came back to practicing religious Judaism], the stigma of a broken engagement would make it impossible for me to even get a date. They laid my choices out for me clearly: marry Yosef or remain alone and childless and living with you parents for the rest of your life. Those were my options” (100).

And so Julia opted for the less stark of these two options- marrying Yosef. But even then, her mother shows a callous disregard for her feelings. In an ideal world, Julia would have wanted a custom bridal gown. However, her mother wanted her to rent one. Okay, fair enough- that is common in the Haredi community. But this was the tenor of the conversation

It was clear to me that I had no choice. I would have to pick a dress from one of those racks in that basement. My mother didn’t have time to go and find other dressmakers, and had zero patience. She was very clear with her instructions. “There are plenty of dresses there. Pick one- quickly, please, because we have so many other errands to do, and I don’t want to have to come back to Brooklyn again. It’s such a schlep.”

-page 109

Most of the dresses were too large. At last, Julia’s mother grabbed one, “this hideous monstrosity with puffy sleeves and a thick, full skirt made of some shiny material masquerading as silk satin, with pasted-on flowers and rhinestones in the middle” (110). It fit Julia, but she absolutely hated it. In her mind, "it “was tacky and fluffy” and “I felt like the ugliest, most pathetic creature” (111). Julia’s wishes were not acknowledged.

On the day of the wedding itself, Julia’s mother chose a makeup artist who

painted two bright streaks of hot neon pink across my perfectly lovely nineteen-year-old skin, and my eyes were covered in so much green eyeshadow that it was difficult to blink. When she was done, I looked at myself in the mirror. I might not have had much exposure to fashion magazines or movies, but it didn’t take a genius to know I looked ridiculous. Between the puffy-sleeved, petticoated gown and the bizarre face paint, I looked like a mad Wes Craven version of a child bride. I couldn’t contain my dismay.

-page 113

Julia tried to remove some of the makeup, which was also causing an allergic reaction. Her mother forced her to reapply it and she told her that she was “being ridiculous and that she had enough on her hands to deal with without having to worry about me” (113).

After Julia had her first child, she wanted to divorce Yosef. She called her parents and told them that she wanted a divorce.

They came over thirty minutes later, both of them, and sitting at my tiny kitchen table, painted a very dismal picture of what my life would look like if I left Yosef. “You will be a divorced woman with a baby who’s also a baalas teshuva, and your family is Russian. Do you know what that means, Talia? It means you will be alone for the rest of your life.”

My father was gentle yet stern. “Do you really want to spend the rest of your life alone? A nebbuch [pathetic person] who has to live with her parents?”

-pages 157- 158

Her mother added to this

“He is your ezer k’negdo [husband who helps you by berating you- NOTE FROM CHANA: THIS IS AN INACCURATE TRANSLATION OF THE HEBREW], and he is doing his job, which is to make you into a better woman. Poor man, he’s stuck with a woman who’s too untznius [immodest]! You should be thanking Hashem for giving you such a wonderful husband. Love? Love is something made up by goyim [gentiles] that only exists to draw you away from Hashem.”

-page 159

As should be extremely clear by now, Julia’s wants, needs and desires were not heard when she was a child or young adult (or even a young married woman). She was not shown love by her parents, or at least not love in a way where she felt loved. She was not validated. Did religion cause this? I don’t think so. It’s more likely the control and lack of warmth were there anyway, and religion was the particular form of expression it found in this home. Anecdotally, I know many people growing up in the Haredi community whose parents did not treat them like this.

When Julia was younger, she met and believed she loved a boy named Yechiel. She met him at a Shabbos meal. Starting at age fifteen, she snuck out to the forest behind her school to meet him. Together, they talked. He was kind. He did things for her. He made her feel seen. She didn’t actually touch him, let alone kiss him, but she planned to marry him.

But then a “troubled” girl from her school informed her that she had been with Yechiel. And when I say been with, I mean the girl gave Yechiel a blowjob and Yechiel touched her breasts. Julia was confused. In her words:

He had betrayed me, plain and simple. I didn’t feel anger or hurt. I was just shattered. All my plans, the future I had seen for myself, was now dust and ashes. It was the destruction of the plan that hurt me the most. That was the only thing that had kept me going during high school- the dream of escape, the thought that one day I would be Mrs. Yechiel Horowitz. The hurt over his betrayal and the anger would come later. Now all I could think of was the destruction of my plan. I didn’t cry, of course. Never let them see you cry. I walked away from Yechiel, and from our future together, with my head held high.

Those were terrible, sleepless nights. I was at a total loss. For as long as I could remember since I was fourteen, I knew what my future would look like. We had even chosen the furniture, and now I felt totally untethered, confused, and so alone. He had always been there for me. My knight in the shining green Camry.

-page 65

Think what this would have meant to Julia. Her own parents have shown her they do not love her or validate her. Along comes this boy who does see her, does care about her, builds a future with her- but then he’s making out with a different girl. It’s not hard to imagine that Julia might have felt, on some level, that she was not lovable. Note that she doesn’t write this in the memoir. This is pure speculation. It’s certainly clear she learned she could not be truly vulnerable. That’s what she means when she says she cannot cry.

Julia later claims she ended the relationship on her own terms, because Yechiel came back to her, he kissed her, and it didn’t arouse her or excite her so “I dumped him for good because of that kiss” (66). I have to wonder, though, whether it was really that simple- or whether that’s her saving face.

Either way, once Julia was engaged to Yosef, she had her kallah classes [bridal preparation courses] and he had his chatan classes [bridgroom preparation courses]. Unfortunately, both of them were taught by the most stringent possible people, people who taught chumras [stringencies] as halakha [objective Jewish law]. In Julia’s words

Suffice it to say that she taught me nothing about sex or pleasure and everything about what I was supposed to do, according to what she claimed was Torah law, to keep my family and my children pure. The one thing she drummed into me during the classes, which took place twice a week every week leading up to the wedding, was that while my husband was “doing his duty,” I was not to think of my body but I was to recite psalms. I was to think of God as his seed spilled into me, as that was the only way to ensure that my children would come out holy. If I enjoyed the physical act too much and allowed myself to lose my concentration and focus, my children would be doomed for life, and it would be my fault, my sin. I had nightmares about this for several years after my marriage and did my utmost to recite psalms in my mind while my husband spilled his seed into me. I was so afraid to ruin my children before they were even born.

-page 103

This is messed up. Unfortunately, this kind of misinformation about sex still occurs (although I hope less frequently), although nowadays, because there is access to the Internet, it is easier for struggling brides and grooms to get access to accurate information. Unfortunately for Julia and Yosef, that option would not have existed.

When it came to Yosef

As ill-prepared as I was for this marriage, Yosef fared even worse. His chosson teacher was one of the strictest, most pious rabbis at Yosef’s yeshiva. His name was Rav Reuven, and I will never forgive him, because he made the first years of my marriage so miserable. He told Yosef that it was sinful for him to kiss me too much, to speak to me too much, that having warm feelings about me would take away Yosef’s concentration from his studies and be his downfall.

He also taught Yosef a saying from the Torah: “Al tarbeh sicha im ha easha,” which literally means, “Don’t talk to a woman a lot.” This saying, believe it or not, exhorts a husband to refrain from speaking too frequently to his own wife! This idea being, if you’re not allowed to speak to her often, how much more does this apply to women who are not your wife? Rav Reuven taught Yosef that he shouldn’t spend too much time in my company, and that kissing and caressing me before the actual act was not only unnecessary but sinful and harmful to his desire of being a great rabbi. Sex was an act that was a mitzvah, or a positive commandment between a married man and woman, only if it was done with the holiest and purest of intentions and not born from pleasure or desire. Like my kallah teacher said to me, Rav Reuven told Yosef over and over that he should be thinking solely of God when he touched me and had intercourse with me, and that he should be reciting psalms in his mind as he came.

-page 107

There is an ascetic approach to sexuality in Judaism (which is typically not practiced- read Marital Intimacy by Avraham Peretz Friedman to learn more about the sources and texts and the joyful sexuality most Orthodox Jews embrace). However, even there there is a halakhic obligation of onah, ensuring the wife’s sexual fulfillment, gratification and pleasure. I don’t know how the rabbi could have failed to teach this to Yosef, or if Yosef simply missed that part, but it’s very distressing that this was the foundation for their relationship.

One of the saddest passages is this one.

It was finally time to try and have sex again. I wanted to be kissed and explored, and I wanted to do my own exploring. Yosef was well proportioned and slim. I wanted to touch every part of his completely unfamiliar body. But he was horrified. He just didn’t expect it, I suppose. He assumed I would be shy and quiet, and that I would lie still and let him do his thing. It wasn’t like that at all, and instead of praising his lucky stars that he had such an uninhibited wife, he chastised me and looked so uncomfortable and disgusted with my blatantly untznius-like behavior that I stopped what I was doing and lay still so that he could enter me. But it didn’t work.

-page 122

And this one.

I was still trying to be physically loving, only to be constantly rebuffed. Everywhere we went, I would find some nook and try to kiss him, but he would disentangle himself from my arms and tell me how inappropriate it was. By the end of that trip, I had given up. I clearly wasn’t going to get the physical contact that I so desperately craved. He thought it was shocking and awful that I wanted him to touch me for no reason other than physical closeness. It was not how a true bas Yisroel (daughter of Israel) should behave, and he looked at me like I was the devil incarnate for even trying to touch him. I was so hurt and so saddened, but again, that voice that told me that I was a bad person and that my needs were wicked and wrong- and that God couldn’t love me because I was such a horrible sinner as to want to have some kind of physical closeness with my husband- would play in my head, and I believed it.

-pages 143-144

Poor Julia. Not loved by her parents, betrayed by the boy she imagined a future with, and now her natural (and wonderful!) curiosity, love and sexual desire repulse her husband. As the story progresses, it is clear that she did not love Yosef and she also did not feel like he loved her. Even when they eventually figured out how to have sex, it was not the pleasure-filled, joyful and passionate communion of bodies and souls that one would wish.

Julia spends a lot of time detailing what the Bais Yaakov ideal is, and all the ways she fell short of it. This resonated a lot with me. She speaks about the stories of self-abnegation and self-sacrifice that Bais Yaakov girls are inundated with, and yes, I heard all of these stories too. She speaks about the obsession with tznius [modesty] that pervades the community, and yes, I also grew up with this, and I also hate that word. (Amusingly, I purchased the Binah magazine Pesach issue and there is an entire ad about how lace-front wigs are assur [forbidden]; it complemented Julia’s statements well.)

Here are a few excerpts.

Yosef found me too friendly, too talkative, and too at ease with his friends.

“They’re all going to be laughing at me behind my back in yeshiva now that I married such an immodest and outgoing woman,” he said. Outgoing is a massive insult in our world. “Yatzanis” (she who goes out) is a word from the Torah relating to a woman named Dinah who was raped by a prince in the city of Shchem. Her brothers had to go and kill all the inhabitants of the town of Shchem as a reprisal for her rape. She had been friendly to aa prince of the city, and untold disaster followed. Itw as a lesson to women everywhere. Stay in your tents. Talk to no man. Be rarely seen and never heard. Otherwise death and destruction follow.

I tried reasoning with Yosef.

“How would you feel if you had cooked and cleaned and served and then had to sit through an entire meal without being allowed to participate in the conversation?” I asked him. “I’m not a woman,” he replied. “That’s not what God wants from me.”

-page 128

and then

I felt like I was always being judged and found wanting. I was never tznius enough, never appropriate enough. I talked back. I had opinions. I wasn’t what he expected in a wife, and he kept trying to change me to fit the mold of the aishes chayil, the woman of valor he had wanted to marry.

-page 157

And on the word ‘tznius’-

That fucking word haunted my dreams. It was constantly there. The bane of my existence. It summed up all my inadequacies. My entire being, my personality, the very fiber of my essence just wasn’t tznius. Try as I might, as religious and covered as I was, I couldn’t manage to not stand out. I stood out everywhere I went. It was inevitable. My nonconformist nature was in constant battle with my regimented and conformist lifestyle. I so badly wanted to be good.

[…]

All I did, all day every day, was in service of Hashem. That was what I had dedicated my life to, and I was all in. and yet, with all that, I was always found lacking. If I could have just managed to be less fashionable, less concerned with my appearance, I would have been a respected rebitzen. It was all that was missing- the one thing that I just couldn’t quite fix in my personality. I just wasn’t tznius enough for anyone’s liking. My outgoing personality was a giant problem. “Outgoing” and “tznius” cannot coexist. I chastised myself as much as they chastised me, and yet I was drawn to clothing, to fashion, to art. I couldn’t help myself. I found my mouth opening to question some man, to impart knowledge when it wasn’t my place to do so, to argue about tractates I wasn’t allowed to be learning in the first place. My nature was the problem, and although I swore to subdue my nature, to change into the quiet, demure woman everyone wanted me to be, I couldn’t manage it.

-page 195

I relate to a lot of this. I am not eidel. I am an outspoken person- a nonconformist- and this is one of many reasons I cannot live within a Haredi community. I would hate it, and if I would try to live as my actual self, they would be threatened by me. Unlike Julia, my clothing wasn’t the problem back when I was in a Bais Yaakov environment- I wore my uniforms and my knee socks, no problem. But my personality was.

I also related to Julia’s statement about how women are taught to achieve greatness by proxy. She relates the story of Rachel and Rabbi Akiva. Then she interprets:

The inherent message of this story is that a woman should let herself go in rags, almost starve, and sacrifice her own happiness and well-being in the service of her husband, so that he can become a great Torah scholar. Not that the woman herself has the capacity to become a great Torah scholar. Not that he can achieve her own greatness. It is only greatness by proxy. You’re the doormat that the great man gets to stand on, and the more you can remove any concept of self- the more you can make yourself nothing more than a receptacle- the better a woman you are. That was the role model that girls ingested from the moment they were old enough to understand a story. There were thousands of stories like this that every girl was taught, over and over, throughout their lives. That route was the only route to goodness, to success as a human being for a woman. She could never hope to achieve personal goals or greatness. She could never have the throne. She had to be the one to clean the throne and prepare the throne and be the step stool for her husband. That was what they inculcated their daughters with. A constant barrage of brainwashing. It works incredibly well.

-page 215

While I do not think this is an accurate portrayal of Rachel and Rabbi Akiva (other Gemaras make clear he valued her, loved her and actually adorned her in a beautiful golden diadem called a Jerusalem of Gold), I understand Julia’s sentiment. Yes. I was taught this as well. My job was to become a kollel wife who would help my husband achieve greatness, and I would thus achieve greatness by proxy. I could not be this. It was not possible for me. And by not being this, by being unable to be this, it was clear I was lower- spiritually speaking- than the other women who could.

Julia also talks about the lack of access women have- especially, access to the Talmud. This is true. There are reasons for it, and it is not just because men have decided to thwart women’s curiosity. But even knowing those reasons, and also knowing there are other options (in the Modern Orthodox world, women can and do have access to high level Talmud study), I spent a lot of time feeling upset I had been born a girl as opposed to a boy. Not because I actually want to be a boy, mind you. But because I wanted the access boys had, the yeshiva learning experience they had. I knew I would have been good at it.

I’ve made my peace with this, in part because my husband correctly pointed out to me that my creativity with Tanakh is unique and important and not something I would have gained if I had been a boy, even a boy who excelled at learning Talmud. But it is very frustrating, as a girl, to know that who you are is not enough and to also be blocked from really accessing and learning that which is most prized within your yeshivish/ Haredi community.

Julia was determined not to raise her children the way she had been raised. She wanted to raise them to feel loved. She also wanted to raise them to have opportunities and more freedom when it came to their choices- especially whom to marry, or what kinds of careers to pursue.

All of that is noble. The problem is that Julia appears to be enmeshed with her children. She does not respect their ability to make their own choices or honor their boundaries. Instead, she involves themselves with their lives- in ways that are unhealthy. This is demonstrated many times in the show ‘My Unorthodox Life.’ It’s also demonstrated in this memoir.

Batsheva, Julia’s oldest daughter, decided she wanted to marry a man called Binyamin (Benjamin). Julia wanted Batsheva to go to college, get a degree, and not get married till later. But Batsheva and Benjamin wanted to get married earlier. At this point, Julia could have sat them down and had a clear conversation with them about her concerns, her fears or her advice. Alternatively, she could have told them she refused to pay for the wedding, and that if they wanted to get married, they would have to do it on their own. She did neither of these things. Instead, she decided to live vicariously through them- to act as the authority in their lives in a way that breaks boundaries and is totally inappropriate. Worse, she applauds herself for having done it. Here’s her depiction of events.

She and Binyamin were in love, and they were both nineteen and super horny, and there was no way on earth that they would break the laws of negiah, which literally means “touch” and forbids physical contact with a member of the opposite sex outside of wedlock. They came to me month after month, begging me to let them get married. Finally, we made a deal. I told them that I would allow them to get married if they would promise me that they would not have children the first five years of their married life. I painted a very stark picture of what it was like to be pregnant, to have and take care of a baby. Batsheva’s childhood experience was so vastly different from mine. She hadn’t changed endless diapers or cleaned the house ever.

They knew that taking birth control before you have at least two children, and not just two children but one girl and one boy, was a giant no-no. This wasn’t some chumrah; this was a sin. They thought I had lost my mind, and they were too afraid to do anything that was so against the law. Finally, we came up with a solution. I told them that I would write down on a piece of paper, and sign it like a contract, that if, when they died, Hashem asked why they had used birth control, that they could say they had no choice, because they were following the mitzvah of honoring one’s father and mother. I swore I would take full responsibility for the birth control in front of Hashem, and that the sin was on my shoulders and my shoulders alone. They accepted my offer.

-pages 236-237

That’s messed up. I understand why she did it. She didn’t want Batsheva’s life to mirror hers- the misery of endless cleaning, taking care of children, and all while not having an actual degree in order to generate a meaningful income. But if your children are old enough to get married, they are also old enough to make their own decisions about their sexual and reproductive lives. This is a huge violation, and Julia can’t even see it.

Julia paints a portrait of herself as an oppressed woman who used her own strength of will to get out of her challenging and fundamentalist community. She is not humble and consistently (likely because she hopes for the validation, admiration and adulation she did not receive as a child or young woman) considers herself the best- has a genius level IQ, is an incredible, charismatic teacher, is very beautiful and desirable and so forth.

I think the point of learning Torah is to transform one’s character. (See Rav Adin Steinsaltz’s incredible essay on this topic here.) It is surprising to me that a woman who spent so much time teaching Torah seems to be unaware of the glaring character flaws that come through in the book.

NASTINESS

Unsurprisingly, Julia is obsessed with beauty. For her, beauty is synonymous with size. All throughout the book she mentions her tiny size, being fit, being slender, being slim. When she describes people, there are the “beautiful” ones and the ones who are not. It is very clear that Julia finds pregnancy to be a revolting state (largely because of the weight gain involved), which seems to be an issue with her mindset. Here are examples where it’s clear she feels this way.

From all my pregnancies, there exists only one photo of me pregnant. I wouldn’t allow anyone to photograph me, as I was hugely embarrassed by my massive size. My nose expanded and covered half my face. The front and back of me had different zip codes. I wasn’t a house; I was an apartment complex. I felt so unwieldy and uncomfortable and just plain miserable.

-page 148

When she talks about Yechiel, the boy she was once in love with, she writes

Though I was trying hard to be ultrareligious, I still had a nagging curiosity about things outside our community, and he was the only person I could talk to about the secular world. And of course I thought he was handsome- though, looking at pictures now, he definitely was not. He had huge ears that stuck out the side of his head and a nice, pronounced nose. But in my eyes, he was gorgeous.

-page 43

On one of her first dates, she describes the man she went out with.

He looked like a Teletubby. He was short and chubby, a round little man. Now, who am I to complain about someone who is vertically challenged? I’m miniscule. But that’s exactly the point. We always want in a spouse what we lack. And to be attracted, I needed a man with height; I had to give my kids a fighting chance, after all. I thought about how I would have to kiss him, to sleep with him, and I felt seriously nauseous, but I chided myself that I was being shallow and to give him a chance. I know you probably think I’m a proper bitch right now, but I’m telling it like it is. Please don’t pretend that you wouldn’t prefer marrying a handsome stranger to a short, chubby one.

-page 87

Julia has an encounter with a pregnant woman and this is her description of the lady-

I looked at her, utterly perplexed. I mean, no one could describe her as sexy. She was enormous and swollen with child. She was covered head to toe, just as I was, and was wearing a sheitel [wig], full stockings, etc.

-page 227

This will shock Julia, but I find these descriptions nasty. These people might read her book and see themselves described this way- she did not need to write about them in this manner. It is sufficient to simply say she wasn’t attracted to her date. Julia seems to think that we as the reader will agree that beauty is equated with thinness and that if anyone has more weight on their body, they are repulsive; I do not agree.

(For the record, there are men who love their wives’ pregnant bodies and find them very sexy. It’s unfortunate Julia doesn’t seem to have met any of them.)

CRUELTY

The only other memory I have from that time was Purim. As usual, we had a bunch of bochurim over for Purim, and it’s a mitzvah for men to get drunk on Purim. (Of course, that mitzvah is only for men; who’s going to clean up after them or serve the food or wash up the vomit if not for women? Typical.)

I dreaded Purim for that very reason. This year, I decided, I was going to exact some tasty revenge. After a huge Purim meal that I had cooked and served, I brought out dessert: caramel apples. I made the apples super chewy and sticky. I watched gleefully as each guy took a deep bite into his apple. I wish you could have seen it. They all sat there trying in vain to separate the caramel apple from their teeth, completely stuck and unable to speak, consternation growing, as they were too drunk to have real motor skills. I sat there and laughed and laughed and laughed. My little revenge for torturing me every year. A solitary moment of comeuppance in a life where I had little say and no way to make my pain felt.

-page 166

Julia could have told her husband she didn’t want to host the Purim seudah and invite all these bochurim over. She could have asked him to get tipsy and not drunk. This cruel, mean-spirited option does not paint her in a good light. I would not want a person like this to be my friend.

LYING

Julia lies and feels no shame, regret or remorse for doing so. When she leaves the community and goes OTD (off the derech) she decides to cheat on her husband.

We made prolonged eye contact, and that lead to another first: we ended up having sex in a bathroom. I could barely believe it as it was happening. It felt like a totally delicious out-of-body experience. The fact that this gorgeous younger man wanted me was mystifying to me. The party was filled with stunning women, and yet after we locked eyes, his never left mine.

-page 280

She later decides to buy leggings and

Somehow, in my mind, to put these on, to wear them in public, would be more shameful than the sex I had had in that bathroom. Obviously, that was a giant no-no, but I considered myself no longer married to Yosef, and non-Jews didn’t really count in Jewish law the same way Jewish men did. It was somehow easier to stomach having sex than it was to put on those pants. Fear is rarely rational, especially if it comes from years of indoctrination and mental abuse.

-page 284

So because she considered herself no longer married to Yosef it was okay to cheat on him? And then justify it? Did he have a say in this? Why not be honest with him?

There is a section missing in my book so perhaps she says more about their separation and there is something there that can excuse this. But otherwise, this is not okay.

Julia later gets into a relationship with a much younger man named Lucas and lies to him about her age.

I was a forty-three-year-old mother of four. He was thirty and owned the planet. Why in the world would he ever want me? My dreams only took me as far as kissing. Plus, he hadn’t even touched my hand.

-page 325

She writes

With Lucas, I didn’t have to be anything or anyone but myself. I didn’t tell him about my life or my past- not fully, at least- and he still thought I was thirty-five, but we spoke of everything else. I shared my dreams and he shared his.

-page 345

If someone’s going to have a sexual relationship with you, don’t you think the least you owe them is to be honest about your age? Shouldn’t they have the choice to be with you or not based on accurate information?

Julia doesn’t think so- somewhere in the book she talks about believing every woman has the right to lie about her age. Oh? If so, can men also lie about how much money they have? Their jobs? What would be the equivalent thing that it’s okay for partners to lie to one another about?

An ex-friend of Julia’s outed her and her real age to her social circle. Julia did not confess the truth when that happened. She continued with her lie. As she writes:

Fatima had tried to wreck my relationship with Lucas and his friends. She sent a picture of my passport to all my new Parisian friends, which clearly showed I was eight years older than I had said. They were so convinced that I was thirty-seven that they thought it was quite pathetic for Fatima to forge a passport just to fuck with me. They literally laughed at her sad attempt to discredit me. My boyfriend’s best friend, this guy named Parth, was the first one to call me and tell me what Fatima had done. He said, “She should have picked a more believable age. Had she chosen thirty-nine, maybe we would have believed her, but forty-five? That’s too absurd. It’s too obvious that you’re not forty-five.” Years later, when I told the truth about my age, they never gave me a hard time. They were so understanding and kind that it made me treasure their friendship all the more.

-page 365

People who publicly admit that they lie, and who feel no shame or guilt about lying- especially to people who are their loves or friends- disturb me. Because liars lie. If Julia is willing to lie about her age to all these people (due to her vanity), she’s willing to lie about other things, too.

So where does this leave us?

Julia has had a complicated life. It has been filled with trauma and dysfunction (I haven’t covered all of it in this review). Some of that trauma was due to religion, but not all of it. Perhaps due to the hole in her life of not having been loved or desired by her parents or her spouse, Julia seems to be a person who requires validation, adulation and attention. It is very important to her that we as the reader see her as successful, desirable, sexy and wish to be her.

Well, I don’t wish to be her. Not even close. She isn’t my role model and she will never be.

What I look for in people is kindness, honesty and a willingness to give. People who are willing to admit their flaws, work on themselves, and grow. People who respect others, which means respecting their boundaries and their agency/ ability to make their own decisions. This is not who Julia is.

Julia consistently evaluates people based on their looks. She laughs at people whose jaws are stuck because of the taffy apples she gave them. She cheats on and lies to her husband and feels no remorse. She is unwilling to truly look at herself and understand who she is- seeing her flaws as a mere unwillingness to “listen to her inner voice” or “trusting the wrong people.” She does not respect others- instead, she justifies her lying to them (as with her husband and Lucas) or enmeshment in their lives (as with Batsheva and Benjamin.) And yet, despite this, she thinks that she is a success story.

She isn’t.

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