Foreskin's Lament: A Memoir [Bargain Price] [Hardcover]

Shalom Auslander (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 4, 2007

Shalom Auslander was raised with a terrified respect for God. Even as he grew up and was estranged from his community, his religion and its traditions, he could not find his way to a life where he didn't struggle against God daily.

Foreskin's Lament reveals Auslander's youth in a strict, socially isolated Orthodox community, and recounts his rebellion and efforts to make a new life apart from it. Auslander remembers his youthful attempt to win the "blessing bee" (the Orthodox version of a spelling bee), his exile to an Orthodox-style reform school in Israel after he's caught shoplifting Union Bay jeans from the mall, and his fourteen mile hike to watch the New York Rangers play in Madison Square Garden without violating the Sabbath. Throughout, Auslander struggles to understand God and His complicated, often contradictory laws. He tries to negotiate with God and His representatives-a day of sin-free living for a day of indulgence, a blessing for each profanity. But ultimately, Shalom settles for a peaceful cease-fire, a standoff with God, and accepts the very slim remaining hope that his newborn son might live free of guilt, doubt, and struggle.

Auslander's combination of unrelenting humor and anger--one that draws comparisons to memoirists David Sedaris and Dave Eggers--renders a rich and fascinating portrait of a man grappling with his faith, family, and community.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Auslander, a magazine writer, describes his Orthodox Jewish upbringing as theological abuse in this sardonic, twitchy memoir that waits for the other shoe to drop from on high. The title refers to his agitation over whether to circumcise his soon to be born son, yet another Jewish ritual stirring confusion and fear in his soul. Flitting haphazardly between expectant-father neuroses in Woodstock, N.Y., and childhood neuroses in Monsey, N.Y., Auslander labors mightily to channel Philip Roth with cutting, comically anxious spiels lamenting his claustrophobic house, off-kilter family and the temptations of all things nonkosher, from shiksas to Slim Jims. The irony of his name, Shalom (Hebrew for peace), isn't lost on him, a tormented soul gripped with dread, fending off an alcoholic, abusive father while imagining his heavenly one as a menacing, mocking, inescapable presence. Fond of tormenting himself with worst-case scenarios, he concludes, That would be so God. Like Roth's Portnoy, he commits minor acts of rebellion and awaits his punishment with youthful literal-mindedness. But this memoir is too wonky to engage the reader's sympathy or cut free Auslander's persona from the swath of stereotype—and he can't sublimate his rage into the cultural mischief that brightens Roth's oeuvre. That said, a surprisingly poignant ending awaits readers. (Oct.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Bookmarks Magazine

Shalom Auslander, author of Beware of God: Stories (2005) and a contributor to This American Life, reveals his ambivalence about God through fear, black humor, and undirected anger. If Foreskin’s Lament sounds like a terrible rage against God, it is, in parts, but it coalesces into a fascinating reflection on the role of faith and ritual in modern life. Most reviewers found Auslander’s stories about his tormented life refreshing, moving, and humorousâ€"for example, the story of his father building an ark for the synagogue, only to be ostracized, struck a high note. However, a few criticized Auslander’s tendency to mask real anger and deep questions with comedy. Beneath the humor, however, lies a reflective memoir on religion’s powerful holdâ€"and why, sometimes, it’s so hard to shake it off.

Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Riverhead Hardcover (October 4, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1594489556
• ASIN: B001C2E3NU
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.5 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (102 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #955,280 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #98 in Books > Religion & Spirituality > Judaism > Movements > Orthodox

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 25 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars One trick pony November 4, 2009

By Norma Manna Blum

Format:Paperback

I read one of the stories from "Foreskin's Lament," in the New Yorker, prior to the publication of the book itself...

I was so stunned by the writing, the unerring rhythm of its telling and its language, the inerrant capturing of sight and sound, that I remember alerting a fair number of friends and relatives to its presence: "You MUST read this remarkable story !!
All agreed that it was a work of art wrapped in righteous indignation...and the greatest kind of humor: that makes you laugh and cry at the same time..

For those who are not Jewish, or for Jews who have grown up freed from the constraints of the religion altogether, by disillusioned parents (there are a lot of us) or with watered down versions that allow for lives not that different, religiously, from that of their fellow citizens in the Diaspora, much is revealed here.

For as funny and bitter Auslander is, the picture of tribal life is stark and real: Judaism is a demanding religion (when the 613 laws are observed to the letter) and the obsession with form (the endless rituals that go with) observance is often overly demanding and irrational... and the tribal elements are still so intrinsic to the religion that the combination of ethnic fears of "the others" and the time and energy it takes to be ritually observant combine to make normal life in the greater community virtually impossible.

Also the level of fantasy about what the outside world is really like is often crippling..
That Auslander was able to create his hilarious.. dangerously side-splitting saga.. of attending a forbidden hockey game at Madison Square Garden, many miles from his home, on the Sabbath when all forms of transportation other than one's legs are expressly forbidden as well, is testimony to his talent, what appeared to be his sensibility, and ability to be witheringly critical while at the same time having sympathy for what had reduced him to such a state of insanity ..
Now THAT's great writing...

And of course, I ordered the book from Amazon almost immediately, anxious to partake of the meal that had been suggested by the appetizer.. and waited impatiently for its arrival.
Alas, disappointment !
Sorry to say the rest of the stories were pallid, pedestrian, some even clumsy and uncertain.
Ordinary whining tales of children born into a world not of their choosing but who not only don't know how to get out of if other than by misbehaving, they don't really WANT to get out of it.. twisted by a combination of insecurity and an exceptionalism drummed into them in their clositered environment.

Sure the religion is a horror.... most religions that contract into uncritical orthodoxy are horrible, and wreak no improvement on the children or the adults who insist on their conforming...
And I don't blame Auslander for feeling bitter that as a man on the brink of middle age he still doesn't know how to deal with the trauma of his high strung environment while growing up.
But that is indeed a serious debility for an artist, for a writer.

On the other hand it HAS given him a subject and apparently his only one: it is hard to imagine Auslander growing into a great writer with a great talent for exploring the wide range of human experience, including the experience of being trapped by religion... not necessarily Judaism..
.
One last thing, for those who are not famiiar with what is a very significant religious detail: Auslander's family were not simply "Orthodox" Jews. (Mitnaged, as the Orthodox refer to themselves.)
That would be demanding enough... and has been addressed in many memoirs and novels...
The Auslanders were members of one of the various Chassidic sects.. (Satmars, perhaps, or Bobovers... really fanatic).. One or another of 14th or 15th century offshoots of Judaism that came to be in Eastern Europe, with their own sets of (fanatic) rules, clothing, habits...and who were virtually wiped out by the Nazis. between 1939 and 1945... Decimated, poverty stricken, displaced, homeless.

While they had some small recovery in post -war Europe, their greatest renaissance was here in the US.. Sects of varying numbers, all intense, febrile, with animosities toward one another as well as the outside world, and all led by their own Rebbes (Rabbis) to whom they owe the most intense unfaltering loyalty...
The Rebbe rules the roost... and as Auslander points out, the autonomy of parents, immutable in Judaism, including the culture, pales before the demands of the Rabbi.... what the Rabbi says goes... what these people, eat, read, do for entertainment, what they read or listen to, what they learn in school.
Of course the kids NEVER attend public schools, and usually they don't engage in sports... As boys grow up they even undertake as their lifetime jobs what the Rebbe suggest they should do.
So in that respect even the less well written, less artful stories in "Foreskin's Lament," are enlightening... if you are not taken aback by the unrelentingly sour tone,,,

Norma Manna Blum

61 of 78 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Funny, poignant, and very readable October 7, 2007

By Debra Hamel TOP 1000 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

Shalom Auslander grew up in the 1970s and 80s in Monsey, New York, in an Orthodox Jewish family, with all that entailed: the arcana of kosher dietary restrictions; the uniform of the Orthodox Jew--tzitzis and peyis and yarmulke; the mind-numbing bordeom of Sabbath, when most worthwhile human activitiy is forbidden by Jewish law.

"It was forbidden to watch TV, it was forbidden to write, it was forbidden to draw, it was forbidden to color. It was forbidden to play with trains because they used electricity. It was forbidden to play with Legos because it was considered building. It was forbidden to play with Silly Putty because if you pressed it against a newspaper it would transfer some of the ink to itself, and so it was considered printing."

More specifically, Auslander grew up in an unhappy Orthodox Jewish family. His father was belligerent and volatile and given to threats involving amputation. His mother wallowed in misery and home decorating. It's hardly surprising that in adulthood Auslander has complicated relationships with both his family and God, the latter an angry entity who, much like Auslander's father, specializes in inconsistent and disproportionate punishments. But Auslander still believes. He believes, for example, that God keeps a particularly careful eye on his misdemeanors, and he is always expecting God to screw him over.

Auslander writes about his fallings-out with both family and God in his very readable memoir Foreskin's Lament. (The reason for the title is made clear about halfway through the book.) He describes the various ways he acted out against both as a teenager; his back-and-forthing on the question of keeping kosher; his self-imposed, frankly shocking acts of penance. The book is a fast read and fascinating for the light it sheds on the lifestyle of the ultra-Orthodox and on Auslander in particular. It is both funny (with one of the most original acknowledgment pages you'll ever read) and poignant, especially when the author is describing his conflicted relationship with his father, whom he manages to portray as both unlikeable and tragic.

Auslander's book serves as a healthy reminder of the perverse influence of religion:

"Thousands of years ago, a terrified, half-made old man genitally mutilated his son, hoping it would buy him some points with the Being he hoped was running the show. Over the years, equally terrified men wrote blessings and composed prayers and devised rituals and ordained that an empty seat be left for Elijah. Six thousand years later, a father will not look his grandson in the face, and a mother and sister will defend such behavior, because the child wasn't mutilitated in precisely the right fashion.

"Come see what your sons are doing in the world."

The author is still not fully recovered from the effects of his religious instruction, but he's happier. It's just a shame that he had to waste so much energy and so much time undergoing that indoctrination and, in turn, in attempting to slough it off.

-- Debra Hamel

16 of 19 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Laugh-out loud funny, but strangely poignant as well December 27, 2007

By Zachary T. Patten

Format:Hardcover

As a non-Jewish atheist, I wasn't sure if I'd be able to relate to this book by a formerly Orthodox Jewish man who still believes in God, despite harboring intense vitriol toward Him. But because Auslander's memoir juxtaposes deadpan humor with heartbreaking vignettes of oppressive family life, even the outsider can't help but be drawn in. From the sins of eating non-Kosher Slim Jims to the great struggle alluded to by the book's title, the author does more than introduce us to the culture of his youth, he envelops us in it. As we come to know the protagonist and his relations, we begin to brace ourselves when Auslander's abusive father raises an eyebrow, and feel pangs of guilt when his mother invokes the Holocaust to coerce her son into being more observant. In the end, we find ourselves hoping the author will somehow find peace of mind, or at least another book deal.