By David Strom
SAN DIEGO —I Am Forbidden by Anouk Markovits is her first novel in English. The main characters are religious Hasidic Jews, followers of the Satmar rebbe living in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
Josef Lichtenstein, an orthodox follower of the Satmar rebbe, was five years old when he witnessed the murder of his younger sister and heard the shooting of his parents by local anti-Semites just prior to World War II. Florina, the family maid, took Josef, changed his name, and raised him as her child and a Christian. She warned him not to undress in front of anyone and to never speak Yiddish.
Five years later in 1944 while he walked through a field he heard and saw two adult Jews murdered by Nazis. A young girl unseen by the Nazi killers was frightened and wanted to cry out. Josef placed his hand over her mouth and ordered her to keep quiet and still. She did.
The young Josef, at the risk of his life, took Mali, the girl he saved from the clutches of the Nazis and took her to Rabbi Zalman Stern. Rabbi Stern raised Mali as his daughter along with his daughter, Atara. The girls were raised like sisters. They loved one another, studied and learned together and faced the Hungarian and Nazi rule together. Rabbi Stern and his family survived the Holocaust and moved to France after the war’s end
At the urging of Rabbi Stern, Josef, then 12 years old, left Florina his surrogate mother and traveled to Brooklyn to study at the Satmar yeshiva where his Bar Mitzvah was held. Later, he was reunited with Rabbi Stern who came to New York from France.
The years passed quickly. Mali and Atara were now young teenagers ready for marriage. Mali was scrupulously Orthodox and very comfortable in her religious world, while Atara questioned what she was taught. She sneaked secular books into the house and read them secretly. In some of her reading she learned that the Satmar Rebbe, who was very anti Zionist, took help from a Zionist in his escape from Hungary during the war. Mali’s parents were murdered as they ran to a train when they saw the Satmar Rebbe riding a transport train to freedom on that Sabbath.
An arranged marriage was made for Mali. She was ecstatic as it was to Rabbi Josef Lichtenstein, the young boy who saved her life. Atara refused to have an arranged marriage and left the religious community. Mali and Josef were happily married but had no children. In the Satmar sect and others, to have children was a major goal of marriage. For ten long years, Mali begged Josef to have himself checked to see if he was sterile but he refused to consider the possibility that their infertility was his problem.
In 1968 in the midst of the “almost” French revolution, Mali and Josef visited Rabbi Stern in Paris. Unbeknownst to Mali, Josef got up enough courage to finally see a fertility doctor. Meanwhile, Mali wandered into section of the city where she is caught up by the revolutionary fervor and has a quick sexual liaison with a just met companion in the rebellion. They returned to Brooklyn where Mali learned that she was pregnant. On that same day, Josef learned that he could not father a child. Happiness did not prevail in that house for very long.
Mali gives birth to a baby girl but remains with Josef, who refuses to have sex with Mali. He vows to discuss the situation with his rabbi/mentor. Josef never got the courage to tell the rabbi of his trouble and raises Mali’s daughter as his own. The years passed rapidly and the story moves fast-forward to tell how their daughter marries and now had many children of her own. When one of Mali’s and Josef’s grandchildren was about to be married, she accidently discovers her grandmother’s transgression and is shocked, upset and depressed to learn that her zaida is not her natural grandfather.
Mali contacted Atara, whom she had not seen or heard from in over forty years, and asked her for help with her granddaughter. Atara, now a successful professional woman, was “filled in” on what occurred in France and her marriage. Mali’s main concern was the happiness of her young granddaughter. Would she or could Atara help?
It is Simchat Torah and Mali, Atara, and granddaughter all go to shul to celebrate this joyous holiday. Atara was refused entrance, as a self-appointed “gate keeper” determined Atara was not dressed modestly enough. Standing outside the shul, Atara could hear the singing of Zalman Stern her father. It was a voice she loved and had not heard in many, many years.
The plot of I Am Forbidden suddenly becomes a mystery and a story about a religious and moral dilemma that raises important questions about women’s roles in the Orthodox community and about intergenerational responsibility: Should children or grandchildren be held accountable for the transgression of a grandmother? What can and should the children/grandchildren do to help lessen the pain of all involved?
In the past couple of years I have read three newly published books, two of them novels and one an autobiography, written by and about women dissatisfied with the narrow roles prescribed by their ultra orthodox community. Why? Is something stirring within their communities that make life intolerable for some of them that these women decide they must leave their community to gain some semblance of freedom?
I Am Forbidden is an engrossing novel. It raises questions about living in a walled off society which frowns upon much of the electronic gadgetry that so many people are enamored with. So many things are forbidden to Satmar women that electronic gadgetry is just another to add to the list of “forbidden”.
When the current Satmar rebbe passes away, will the new leader be able to make modest changes in their way of life?
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Strom is professor emeritus of education at San Diego State University. He may be contacted via david.strom@sdjewishworld.com