The Rabbi's Daughter [Paperback]

Reva Mann (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 30, 2008

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. The daughter of a highly respected London rabbi, Reva was a wild child, spiralling into a whirlwind of sex and drugs by the time she reached adolescence. But as a young woman, 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 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, The Rabbi’s Daughter is at its heart a universal story, a journey toward redemption that is an unforgettable read.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In her misspent youth, Mann, a journalist and daughter of a prominent London rabbi and granddaughter of a chief rabbi of Israel, was hooked on drugs and promiscuous sex, which led to hepatitis B infection and an arrest for drug possession. In her 20s, she went to Jerusalem, where again she disappointed her progressive Orthodox parents by marrying a born-again American Jew who had become an obsessive and separatist Hasid. Unhappiness and tragedy were Mann's constant companions: a retarded sister; the abortion of a brain-damaged fetus; the unraveling of her passionless marriage and her disenchantment with Hasidism; breast cancer; and her elderly widowed mother's suicide. Mann parades unsavory aspects of her behavior: she and her boyfriend, Sam, knowingly have raucous sex in earshot of her anxious children, and after Sam's brother is killed in a terrorist attack, Mann is upset that Sam isn't paying enough attention to her at the burial. While Mann's clever, fast-paced memoir offers an intimate glimpse of Orthodox Judaism and aptly demonstrates the human yearning for redemption, some of the events she recounts strain credulity, particularly her deflowering in her father's synagogue and a lesbian affair in an ultra-Orthodox women's yeshiva that is overheard by a religiously zealous tattletale. (Nov. 6)
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.

Review

“Sometimes shocking, sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes very funny, Reva Mann’s story is a fascinating glimpse into a hidden world.”—Elle

“Mann tells her story with genuine humor and self-deprecating wit, winning the sympathy of even disapproving readers. Mann’s coming-of-age story speaks directly to young people struggling with questions of family, faith and identity.”—Booklist

“A gripping book, harrowing and devastatingly honest, as well as an important book.”—Naomi Alderman, author of Disobedience, winner of the 2006 Orange Award for New Writers

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Dial Press Trade Paperback; Reprint edition (September 30, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385341431
• ISBN-13: 978-0385341431
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 6.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #56,150 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #1 in Books > Religion & Spirituality > Judaism > Women and Judaism

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Engrossing yet Disappointing, June 6, 2008

By 

Charmed Life (NJ) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Rabbi's Daughter (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.

33 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Pulp fiction, December 11, 2007

By 

Perry Patetic (Wichita, KA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Rabbi's Daughter (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."

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars too gossipy, February 28, 2009

By 

Michael Lewyn (Forest Hills, NY) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Rabbi's Daughter (Paperback)

This was certainly readable, but I still wouldn't strongly recommend it- far too much lashon hara [literally, 'evil tongue' but less literally, true but gratuitious gossip] for my tastes about the author's parents. Having said that, this book certainly does display what it is like to be someone who oscillates between wacky sex-and-drugs permissiveness and wacky religion [which, by the way, is not typical of Orthodox Judaism; she was messing around with the right wing of the right wing, theologically speaking]. And the picture is not a pretty one.