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Straight Talk: My Dilemma As an Orthodox Jewish Woman

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As an orthodox woman myself, I was at first skeptical of the title. It is remarkable how the author manages to get her slightly feminist point across, without being pushy or preachy about it and while making it clear that she is orthodox and intends to remain that way. From the title I thought that it would be a book trying to remove women from orthodoxy, but that's not at all the case. It will make you think and maybe re-think some aspects of your life and it provides the reader with plenty of footnotes and bibliography that will assist anyone who desires to do further reading on the topics presented. At times the writing style made it a little hard to continue to read but overall this is a good book and while it is not going to make me change my life, it may just be a great starting point for someone who is looking for resources and ideas for greater participation of orthodox Jewish women in the ritual life of their congregation and families. The author does a very good job at showing the different levels of observance and ritual adherence by women within the orthodox community.

The subtitle of Straight Talk by Sally Berkovic -- "My Dilemma as a Modern Orthodox Jewish Woman" -- pretty much tells what the main thread of the book is. Ms. Berkovic has deeply mixed feelings about the world of Modern Orthodoxy that she lives in, but she seems to live mostly satisfied within that world, or at least the joys of her life outweigh the issues that anger and frustrate her. It's looking at her two young daughters, and wondering what they will learn from her, or whether the contradictions of Modern Orthodox practice, particularly for women, will push them either toward the more rigid ultraOrthodox world or out of Orthodoxy all together.

The book begins as a letter to her daughters, explaining where she comes from as the daughter of Holocaust survivors raised in Australia, with a less than ideally submissive and unquestioning outlook. She veers off into interesting analysis of the problems for modern women with traditional practice--being shut out of certain rituals and leadership position, the conflict between what's needed to have a career in the modern world and what is expected of women within the religious world, the dependence on the halachic rulings of rabbis who often don't seem at all cognizant of the reality of women's lives. Her analysis did not strike me as particularly strident (though I am not inside the Orthodox world myself) but the sincere words of someone who wants to find a place within this world that is secure both halachically and spiritually.

Her call may not be terribly loud but it is urgent because the problems she recognizes are real--if one risks being trapped in a marriage by a man who won't give a get (Jewish divorce), one is more likely to choose not to have a traditional Jewish ceremony at all, or to leave behind the rules that say that it's the get or nothing, when the rabbis and authorities don't seem all that responsive to the problem and don't bring to bear all the pressure they could on the men who are acting dishonorably. She outlines unrevolutionary steps that can be taken to show young women a world which doesn't just confine them but embraces and supports them -- women's prayer groups, rituals for daughters' births and bat mitzvahs, Jewish education in day schools and Hebrew schools that places more emphasis on learning Torah and even Talmud than on conforming to standards of modesty.

Ms. Berkovic is bravely honest about both her struggles and the joys she finds in her life. I admire her for being so open in telling her own story and in sharing what she finds both wonderful and frustrating about her faith and her life.

The best thing is that this is not a heavy tome but a very readable, at times laugh-out-loud funny (her imagined supermarket conversations with a Muslim woman were great), and a quick read. But her ideas are very serious and worth considering; I hope that this book has reached a readership within the Orthodox community as they, like all Jewish communities, struggle with the issues of intermarriage and retention of the next and coming generations in the Jewish faith.