The Fictions of Faith
Eve Harris, The Marrying of Chani Kaufman
Sandstone Press, 350pp, £8.99, ISBN 9781908737434
reviewed by Dana Drori
Eve Harris’s The Marrying of Chani Kaufman, long-listed for this year’s Man Booker Prize, seeks to elucidate an isolated world—the Haredi, or ultra-orthodox, Jewish community in Golders Green, London. The title reveals the plot: Chani Kaufman, 19 and a little too spunky for most Haredi boys, has finally been arranged to marry 20-year-old Orthodox-yet-secret-Coldplay-fan Baruch Levy.
The book grows from their union, with chapters taking on the perspective of two other characters in the periphery: Rebbetzin Rivkah (née Rebecca), the Rabbi’s wife, who teaches Chani how to be a Jewish bride despite secretly desiring to abandon her frum world; and her son, Avromi, who despite being a Rabbi’s son, attends a secular University where he falls from Haredi grace by having sex before marriage with— oy vey—a mixed-race shiksa.
The secondary characters – the ones who don’t get their own chapters– are the couple’s parents, who are exaggerated to the point of caricature. Mrs Kaufman, burdened by the birthing, nursing, and marrying of eight daughters, laments her maternal unavailability: ‘I can’t sleep, I’ve been a bad mother’ she wails to her snoring husband, like a character from Jewish folklore. Baruch’s mother, villain-in-law, rich by marriage and snobbish about Chani’s not-so-elegant family background, tries to foil her son’s nuptials with the chicanery of a cartoon mastermind. The Haredi dads sporadically fill the background: they’re either aloof or oppressive or both. Mr Kaufman dreams about the Baal Shem Tov. Mr Levy prays at his office.
The book’s non-linear structure - chapters shift between points of view, experiences and memories à la The Corrections – moves the reader between Chani and Baruch’s wedding night, London’s Hasidic neighborhoods and Jerusalem in the 1980s. We are taken into the intimate space of the mikveh (the ritual bathhouse), the synagogue and the matchmaker’s home. This elliptical storytelling is the most interesting part of the book, which otherwise disappoints with its superficial and at times farcical treatment of story and character.
There are several problems with this book, the most glaring of which is its trite writing. Catherine Taylor at The Guardian called it ‘breezily written’. For a book that addresses potentially serious subject matter—arranged marriages, inner conflicts of faith, difficulties of adhering to strict religious laws—there are no tingling sentences, no craft to the paragraphs, no subtlety to the characters. Harris has a very bad habit of telling her readers how the characters feel. Baruch ‘felt controlled’ and the rabbi ‘felt like a fraud’. Chani’s relationship with her father is introduced thusly: ‘she adored him’.
When Harris does use descriptive language, she relies on Biblical and Jewish imagery. Chani’s sisters ‘part like the Red Sea’ to make room for her on the sofa; Baruch blushes ‘the colour of chrain’ when he sees Chani. This stylistic choice could have been clever if the similes didn’t feel so forced and awkward, but as it is, the references to the Haredi community feel like a backdrop for a melodramatic dime novel. Even the publisher’s description sounds bodice-ripping: ‘Buried secrets, fear and sexual desire bubble to the surface in a story of liberation and choice; not to mention what happens on the wedding night…’
In recent years, the Man Booker Prize has been vacillating on the virtues (or vices) of readability. In 2011, then judge Chris Mullin admitted that he favored books that could ‘zip along’. His fellow judges were also criticized for prioritizing easy reads. And readability is fine if there’s quality to the book, if the characters are well developed and the story is told with care. Julian Barnes’s The Sense of an Ending, that year’s winner, is a remarkable example. In the case of Chani Kaufman, however, the book’s unchallenging prose reflects its lack of literary innovation and ambition. At first glance, the book is poised for literary award consideration: it is a debut novel, written by a woman, published by an independent press and about a world and perspective not often written about. But that potential dissipates in the first chapter.
The main characters are likeable but contrived. In an interview with Haaretz, Harris said that her characters are ‘ordinary people living religious lives’. But it’s precisely Harris’s idea of secularism-as-ordinary, even in Haredi communities, that makes the novel problematic. It strains credulity that a Rabbi’s son would go to secular University, or that his wife – with her distinguished role in the community – would abandon her family (on Shabbat, no less!) in favor of a secular life. That Baruch would choose his own shidduch (arranged marriage). That Chani, religious or not, would be so aggressive toward her mother-in-law. While it is true that these experiences—Yeshivas, Shidduchs, rituals—touch on real conflicts within the Haredi community, to have every character find more fault than favor within the community gives the reader the impression that such sentiments are standard. That’s not just an unrealistic portrayal, it’s an unfair one.
In that same interview, Harris, a secular Jewish woman who taught at an all-girls Orthodox Jewish school, admits writing her own frustrations with the frum world into Chani Kaufman. What she doesn’t admit is how gravely she imposes her secular gaze onto her narrative, either through her descriptions of oppressive traditions or through the characters’ preoccupations with how they are understood by the non-orthodox world. The Rebbetzin wonders how she appears to secular passersby. Chani envies the freedom of the godless girls on the street. Baruch is lured by the tits he sees on the tube. For all the insight Harris claims to have gleaned in her year of teaching, her novel maintains a point of view that is firmly on the outside.
Harris’s outsider stance also results in a narrow showcase of Haredi communities, a sort of zoo tour of Orthodox Judaism. The women wear wigs! They are obsessed with sweets and get fat and pregnant and sad as soon as they marry! They have to wear thick tights and can never feel free! Men and women can’t touch! The neighbours gossip! The men dance ‘like Cossacks’! Haredi life – a culture rich with history and scholarship – is rendered as spectacle. The only time the reader witnesses the warmth and vibrancy of the Haredi community is through the Rebbetzin’s backstory, a frum origin myth that gets at the root of their shared spirituality and ritual. This is the most beautiful part of the book, but it is quickly undermined by the Rebbetzin’s subsequent religious dysfunction
Booker nomination aside, is reading The Marrying of Chani Kaufman worth it? Parts are funny, and the characters are easy to empathize with, if only because they are depicted as innocent victims of Haredi life. But writing about a specific world engenders specific responsibilities. It should teach the reader something real and honest about that world. This book does not.
The book grows from their union, with chapters taking on the perspective of two other characters in the periphery: Rebbetzin Rivkah (née Rebecca), the Rabbi’s wife, who teaches Chani how to be a Jewish bride despite secretly desiring to abandon her frum world; and her son, Avromi, who despite being a Rabbi’s son, attends a secular University where he falls from Haredi grace by having sex before marriage with— oy vey—a mixed-race shiksa.
The secondary characters – the ones who don’t get their own chapters– are the couple’s parents, who are exaggerated to the point of caricature. Mrs Kaufman, burdened by the birthing, nursing, and marrying of eight daughters, laments her maternal unavailability: ‘I can’t sleep, I’ve been a bad mother’ she wails to her snoring husband, like a character from Jewish folklore. Baruch’s mother, villain-in-law, rich by marriage and snobbish about Chani’s not-so-elegant family background, tries to foil her son’s nuptials with the chicanery of a cartoon mastermind. The Haredi dads sporadically fill the background: they’re either aloof or oppressive or both. Mr Kaufman dreams about the Baal Shem Tov. Mr Levy prays at his office.
The book’s non-linear structure - chapters shift between points of view, experiences and memories à la The Corrections – moves the reader between Chani and Baruch’s wedding night, London’s Hasidic neighborhoods and Jerusalem in the 1980s. We are taken into the intimate space of the mikveh (the ritual bathhouse), the synagogue and the matchmaker’s home. This elliptical storytelling is the most interesting part of the book, which otherwise disappoints with its superficial and at times farcical treatment of story and character.
There are several problems with this book, the most glaring of which is its trite writing. Catherine Taylor at The Guardian called it ‘breezily written’. For a book that addresses potentially serious subject matter—arranged marriages, inner conflicts of faith, difficulties of adhering to strict religious laws—there are no tingling sentences, no craft to the paragraphs, no subtlety to the characters. Harris has a very bad habit of telling her readers how the characters feel. Baruch ‘felt controlled’ and the rabbi ‘felt like a fraud’. Chani’s relationship with her father is introduced thusly: ‘she adored him’.
When Harris does use descriptive language, she relies on Biblical and Jewish imagery. Chani’s sisters ‘part like the Red Sea’ to make room for her on the sofa; Baruch blushes ‘the colour of chrain’ when he sees Chani. This stylistic choice could have been clever if the similes didn’t feel so forced and awkward, but as it is, the references to the Haredi community feel like a backdrop for a melodramatic dime novel. Even the publisher’s description sounds bodice-ripping: ‘Buried secrets, fear and sexual desire bubble to the surface in a story of liberation and choice; not to mention what happens on the wedding night…’
In recent years, the Man Booker Prize has been vacillating on the virtues (or vices) of readability. In 2011, then judge Chris Mullin admitted that he favored books that could ‘zip along’. His fellow judges were also criticized for prioritizing easy reads. And readability is fine if there’s quality to the book, if the characters are well developed and the story is told with care. Julian Barnes’s The Sense of an Ending, that year’s winner, is a remarkable example. In the case of Chani Kaufman, however, the book’s unchallenging prose reflects its lack of literary innovation and ambition. At first glance, the book is poised for literary award consideration: it is a debut novel, written by a woman, published by an independent press and about a world and perspective not often written about. But that potential dissipates in the first chapter.
The main characters are likeable but contrived. In an interview with Haaretz, Harris said that her characters are ‘ordinary people living religious lives’. But it’s precisely Harris’s idea of secularism-as-ordinary, even in Haredi communities, that makes the novel problematic. It strains credulity that a Rabbi’s son would go to secular University, or that his wife – with her distinguished role in the community – would abandon her family (on Shabbat, no less!) in favor of a secular life. That Baruch would choose his own shidduch (arranged marriage). That Chani, religious or not, would be so aggressive toward her mother-in-law. While it is true that these experiences—Yeshivas, Shidduchs, rituals—touch on real conflicts within the Haredi community, to have every character find more fault than favor within the community gives the reader the impression that such sentiments are standard. That’s not just an unrealistic portrayal, it’s an unfair one.
In that same interview, Harris, a secular Jewish woman who taught at an all-girls Orthodox Jewish school, admits writing her own frustrations with the frum world into Chani Kaufman. What she doesn’t admit is how gravely she imposes her secular gaze onto her narrative, either through her descriptions of oppressive traditions or through the characters’ preoccupations with how they are understood by the non-orthodox world. The Rebbetzin wonders how she appears to secular passersby. Chani envies the freedom of the godless girls on the street. Baruch is lured by the tits he sees on the tube. For all the insight Harris claims to have gleaned in her year of teaching, her novel maintains a point of view that is firmly on the outside.
Harris’s outsider stance also results in a narrow showcase of Haredi communities, a sort of zoo tour of Orthodox Judaism. The women wear wigs! They are obsessed with sweets and get fat and pregnant and sad as soon as they marry! They have to wear thick tights and can never feel free! Men and women can’t touch! The neighbours gossip! The men dance ‘like Cossacks’! Haredi life – a culture rich with history and scholarship – is rendered as spectacle. The only time the reader witnesses the warmth and vibrancy of the Haredi community is through the Rebbetzin’s backstory, a frum origin myth that gets at the root of their shared spirituality and ritual. This is the most beautiful part of the book, but it is quickly undermined by the Rebbetzin’s subsequent religious dysfunction
Booker nomination aside, is reading The Marrying of Chani Kaufman worth it? Parts are funny, and the characters are easy to empathize with, if only because they are depicted as innocent victims of Haredi life. But writing about a specific world engenders specific responsibilities. It should teach the reader something real and honest about that world. This book does not.