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The Rabbi's Daughter Hardcover – October 30, 2007

by Reva Mann (Author)

46 customer reviews

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In this honest, daring, and compulsively readable memoir, Reva Mann paints a portrait of herself as a young woman on the edge—of either revelation or self-destruction. Ricocheting between extremes of rebellion and piety, she is on a difficult but life-changing journey to inner truth.

The journey began with an unhappy childhood in a family where religion set the tone and deviations from it were not allowed. But Reva, a granddaughter of the head of the Rabbinic Council of Israel and daughter of a highly respected London rabbi, was a wild child and she rebelled, spiralling into a whirlwind of sex and drugs by the time she reached adolescence.

As a young woman, however, Reva had a startling mystical epiphany that led her to a women’s yeshivah in Israel, and eventually to marriage to the devoutly religious Torah scholar who she thought would take her to ever greater heights of spirituality. But can the path to spiritual fulfillment ever be compatible with the ecstasies of the flesh or with the everyday joys of intimacy and pleasure to which she is also strongly drawn? With unflinching candor, Reva shares her struggle to carve out a life that encompasses all the impulses at war within herself.

An eye-opening glimpse into the world of the ultra-Orthodox and their elaborately coded rituals for eating, sleeping, bathing, and lovemaking, as well as a deeply personal rumination on identity, faith, and self-acceptance, this is at its heart a universal story. For those of any faith who have grappled with their own spiritual longings, and for anyone fascinated by traditional religion and its role in modern society, Reva Mann’s chronicle of a journey toward redemption is an unforgettable read.

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Product Details

Hardcover: 368 pages
Publisher: The Dial Press (October 30, 2007)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0385341423
ISBN-13: 978-0385341424
Product Dimensions: 5.8 x 1.2 x 8.4 inches
Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (46 customer reviews)
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,269,970 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #224 in Books > Religion & Spirituality > Judaism > Women & Judaism
- #1016 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Ethnic & National > Jewish
- #12976 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Specific Groups > Women

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Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars

5 star		52%
4 star		18%
3 star		15%
2 star		11%
1 star		4%

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

57 of 57 people found the following review helpful

Engrossing yet Disappointing

By S.A.L. on June 6, 2008

Format: Hardcover

I finished this book in a day and found it very hard to put down.
It reads as the memoir of a woman who grew up in a religious Jewish household, left the fray to lead a lifestyle of sex and "liberation" and returned to join the ultra-religious Hasidic community. The book promised to highlight the struggles a woman faced in choosing between a religious lifestyle and a non-religious one. And that is my biggest issue with the book. The religious lifestyle she describes consists of a joyless virtually loveless existence full of empty rules, stringencies, and empty relationships. The "non-religious" lifestyle she chooses consists of adultery, promiscuous sex, drug use, lesbianism, more drug use, and more promiscuous sex.
I had truly wanted to relate to the author, as I am a (mostly happy) Orthodox woman myself, but I do question what "life on the other side of the fence" might be like from time to time. I found it impossible to do so for two reasons. First the author's experience of Judaism was skewed, extreme, and not an accurate glimpse of mainstream Orthodoxy. Second, her non-religious lifestyle disgusted me and I have a hard time believing most secular people engage in half the things the author happily did in her pursuit of a "non-religious" way of life.
Like some other reviewers I found some of the incidents related strained belief. A woman who repeatedly professes to love G-d so much she joins the most extreme and ascetic Orthodox branch happily recounts how she lost her virginity in a synagogue of all places.
Her emotions just did not ring true to me. Nor did I really get a sense of genuine spirituality coming from the author.
I hope anyone reading this book realizes the views of this author are extreme and her experiences are not shared by the majority of Orthodox Jewish women. Some of us do live balanced, fulfilling and happy lives, and interact with genuinely caring and loving people.

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46 of 54 people found the following review helpful

Pulp fiction

By Perry Patetic on December 11, 2007

Format: Hardcover

This book is a self-centered memoir of an oversexed, confused woman who seems to delight in the sordid details of her adolescent life (which persists well into chronologic adulthood) and in blaming her problems on everyone except herself. Although the author claims on You Tube that she has changed names in order to avoid embarrassment, the descriptions are astoundingly thinly concealed, rendering it immediately apparent who her parents (a respected English Rabbi and his wife) were. Of greater concern, one wonders how her 3 children responded to reading of their mother's sexual adventures and fantasies, which she describes as occurring in a variety of places ranging from fecally soiled toilets to the sanctity of her father's synagogue. The idea, proposed by the author, that this book somehow informs the reader of the Jewish Orthodox world is preposterous. It is an astoundingly self-centered, blinkered, publicity-seeking "memoir" of a Rabbi's daughter with sexual, addictive and and other dysfunctions that can be summed up in 2 words---"total trash."

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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful

Oy.....

By DJY51 VINE VOICE on September 6, 2009

Format: Paperback

You can tell very early on that the author's search for a spiritual path will be foiled by her secular cravings. No Hassidic husband would tolerate the graphic descriptions of her past. And no Hassidic wife would revel in her hedonistic history.
Mann is so physically descriptive of her behavior and desires, that her repentance of her past, including drug use, promiscuous sex and abusive relationships, seems insincere. She enjoys talking about her past too much. It's simply a matter of time before her religious life will be eclipsed by her past and current appetites.
This could have been a fascinating memoir were the author less self-absorbed, and able to control her writing so you couldn't figure out what was going to happen so easily. But her writing mirrors her behavior, and neither were within her control.

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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful

Difficult to identify with her

By SLB on February 28, 2012

Format: Paperback Verified Purchase

Spoilers are included.

This book is not memorable for it's literary style. The writing is mediocre. The story is one you hear more and more frequently, about life as a woman in the ultra Orthodox Jewish world. Most of them say pretty much the same things, and each tends to confirm the other's story. A woman's goal and value is in her ability to bear and raise children, and create a Torah home for her Torah student husband. The unfortunate representations of marital sexual relations do back up those nasty rumors that have been going around. Of course, all the Orthodox people who review the book say, "But that's not the way it is!" And maybe it isn't for everyone, but certainly often enough for it to be a common occurrence when people finally feel free to talk about it without having to make it pretty "for the goyim". (Non-Jews or, to the ultra Orthodox, Jews who are not ultra Orthodox) Also, as a memoir rather than a study of Judaism, remember that the impression of Judaism is the author's, and is not intended as a well rounded exploration of Judaism. It doesn't need to be; after all, it's a memoir. This concept seems to be difficult for some people to grasp.

Unfortunately, I had almost no ability to relate to the author. She's unlikable. Her expectations are unreal, and therefore doomed to fail. I was particularly dismayed by her apparent lack of concern about the effects of her behavior on her children, when those effects were not going unnoticed by her. She is a person who is stimulated by extremes and novelty, so the likelihood that she is going to find deep satisfaction in a religion based on structured minutia is a predictable failure. Yes, she went to an extreme form of Judaism, but the more extreme the Judaism, the more regimented it is.Read more ›

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

I enjoyed this well-written story very much and would recommend it

This book was written with a lot of insight into how one girl viewed her life as a Rabbi's daughter. The ups and downs of this position were shown with a lot of feeling. Read more

Published 28 days ago by Rochelle Novoselsky

So Enjoyable!

I zipped through this book with ease because the writing just spoke to me. I've wondered about young Jews who cross into Hassidism and this writer showed me how this was for her. Read more

Published 2 months ago by Bookish

Lots and lots of very expletive sex, but the ...

Lots and lots of very expletive sex ,but the book was all about that because that was her desire it was never enough for her ,I felt sorry in a way that what she needed to get some... Read more

Published 4 months ago by Lola

Amazing emotional journey worth taking

In love humorous lighthearted books but this book with its deep journey and drama is a tough one to put down. Definitely worth the read.

Published 6 months ago by Matthew T. Gehl

This was a wonderful book. It grabbed me from the beginning to ...

This was a wonderful book. It grabbed me from the beginning to the
end. I was sorry to finish it and put it down.

Published 7 months ago by Jane Rudner

Five Stars

This book is very good.

Published 8 months ago by Erika Furj

Five Stars

An eye opening book with a look inside a religious community. Fasinating!