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The Mountain Family
An Appilachian Family of 12 and their fascinating journey to Judaism.
313 pages, Hardcover
First published November 1, 2013
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
January 24, 2016
I give this book 5 for the story and 3 for the writing. I read this in one sitting over shabbos today. This is the poignant tale of Tzirel Rus Berger and her children on their path to becoming Jewish. I got much needed chizuk from her story.
Tzirel comes from a family of seventh day Adventists, the daughter of a pastor. Later in college she met and married a seventh day Adventist and moved with him to Appalachia. They became parents to 10 children. Later they found gaps in their learning and over the course of seven years embraced Orthodox Judaism. The second half of this book is Berger's story of her life in Israel. It read fast, and I would recommend to anyone needing a dose of strengthening in their faith.
Tzirel comes from a family of seventh day Adventists, the daughter of a pastor. Later in college she met and married a seventh day Adventist and moved with him to Appalachia. They became parents to 10 children. Later they found gaps in their learning and over the course of seven years embraced Orthodox Judaism. The second half of this book is Berger's story of her life in Israel. It read fast, and I would recommend to anyone needing a dose of strengthening in their faith.
December 29, 2014
As frum memoirs go, I liked this one better than most, but it doesn’t rank with my all-time favorites. I was inclined in its favor even before I began because one of my seminary classmates married the oldest son of the family, so not only did I have the pleasure of seeing her wedding picture, my sem was mentioned several times, which was a thrill. The story is about a family that began as Seventh Day Adventists in the Appalachian Mountains and eventually found their way to Torah Judaism. They endured some terrible hardships over the years, so much of the book focuses on stories of Providence: how G-d sent them the perfect solution to their problems just in the nick of time. As a religious person, I get strength from stories like that because I, too, am always in need of G-d’s Providence, and I like the reassurance that it is coming.
You can’t help but admire the author and her family after reading this book, but I must admit it did evoke a few feelings of inadequacy. I’m a baalas teshuva, so like a convert, I went through a phase in which I was incredibly idealistic. The difference is that Tzirel Rus Massey seems to have maintained her faith and purity, but mine has definitely declined over the years. One of the anecdotes she tells is that early in her oldest son’s conversion process, he was early to shul every day. “Eventually, you’ll become like the rest of us,” the other congregants told him. “You’ll come late to shul, too.” Today her oldest son is running a frum farming school in northern Israel. It sounded so good, I’d like to send my own son there, except I think he may be too old for it. In any case, I’m sure Dovid Massey still arrives early at shul, but I can’t say the same for myself. Sure, I keep Shabbos, but am I as connected to G-d as Tzirel Rus still is? I can’t say I’m doing as well as I could be.
I recommend this book to all frum people, especially if you’ve got a strong admiration for “back to nature” type folks. If not, that’s fine, because Tzirel and her daughters have also come to prefer the conveniences of city life. Either way, it’s an inspiring story about one family’s dedication to truth. It’s not all rose-colored, but it does have a happy ending.
You can’t help but admire the author and her family after reading this book, but I must admit it did evoke a few feelings of inadequacy. I’m a baalas teshuva, so like a convert, I went through a phase in which I was incredibly idealistic. The difference is that Tzirel Rus Massey seems to have maintained her faith and purity, but mine has definitely declined over the years. One of the anecdotes she tells is that early in her oldest son’s conversion process, he was early to shul every day. “Eventually, you’ll become like the rest of us,” the other congregants told him. “You’ll come late to shul, too.” Today her oldest son is running a frum farming school in northern Israel. It sounded so good, I’d like to send my own son there, except I think he may be too old for it. In any case, I’m sure Dovid Massey still arrives early at shul, but I can’t say the same for myself. Sure, I keep Shabbos, but am I as connected to G-d as Tzirel Rus still is? I can’t say I’m doing as well as I could be.
I recommend this book to all frum people, especially if you’ve got a strong admiration for “back to nature” type folks. If not, that’s fine, because Tzirel and her daughters have also come to prefer the conveniences of city life. Either way, it’s an inspiring story about one family’s dedication to truth. It’s not all rose-colored, but it does have a happy ending.
May 3, 2022
Book Review
"The Mountain Family"
2/5 stars
"If the love child of Pollyanna and Mary Poppins overwrote an implausible book....."
*******
This book is not worth a second read and that's because it probably wasn't really even worth a first read.
Two major reasons:
1. I don't know how much I believe that this happened.
These books that I find published on labels (Artscroll/Mesorah/Feldheim) are just a little bit over the top when they are giving a hagiography of some person-- and let's be clear that that's what that is, because if you did not know that no one was perfect you would not find it out from any of these type books.
Specifically, I have in mind the character of Avraham ben Avraham in the (eponymous) book by Selig Schanowitz.
It's not even clear whether or not "Avraham ben Avraham" existed, but the author gave such glowing descriptions of all the characters in the book and intricate details of their conversations (from a couple of centuries ago) that it makes me believe that this is another one of those stories /haggadaot that have been told so many times and so vividly that people forget that *they never happened*.
And the purpose of this story is is not really even to narrate a historical event, but to create a narrative about how the scales fell from the eyes of so many people when they decided to convert from Xtianity to Judaism.
Or to lionize this or that Rabbi.
The fact that so much $hit in this book does not go together is what makes me believe that it didn't happen:
**The author grows up in an upper middle class West Coast family, but she decides to marry into a family of hillbillies and gives birth to 11 children while living in houses that didn't even have running water(!).
What sane person does that?
It would be one thing if she had grown up using outhouses all her life and kept on using them, but the thing is that she didn't. (And how do you deal with sexual odors with no running water? You do kind of wonder that since she conceived many times under those circumstances.)
***(p.135) Living in a tent? And homeschooling her children while they lived in a tent? It also appears that she conceived her 10th child while living in that tent.
***The author also claims to have read "thousands of books" (p.145). But couldn't learn to speak Hebrew?
***(p.174) She claims that people accepted her kids into a Jewish Day School before conversion, but I have a gold standard conversion and one out of the three local schools in Jewish Detroit (Darchei Torah) did not accept my kids because they did not want blacks or converts there. Also, they put her child right in the appropriate grade even though all of them had been homeschooled and therefore none of them had had any of the Judaic content necessary.
***People just came out of the woodwork to buy plane tickets for her children to go and study abroad in Yeshiva, even though she had not yet converted. Also, there would be the issue of a court converting a minor who would live / be under the care of a parent who was not Jewish.
***The converting Rabbi told her that if she lived through a year of Jewish holidays then the conversion would be finished--even though I have never heard of a rabbi giving a deadline for conversion.
***(p.182) Chabad outsources anti-missionary work to her before she even converts?
***This woman doesn't fill out a single job application, there is no single page where she meets somebody to talk about a job in order to fund these grand schemes moving from Atlanta to Baltimore. (WITH NO JOB!)
Do these things really make sense? (I think a wise old Jewish woman by the name of Judge Judy said that "if it doesn't make sense, then that's because it's not true.")
***Then her parents move to Israel (under what right of return?) and decide to stay Xtians. AND she keeps in contact with them? (Orthodox communities are justifiably EXTREMELY suspicious, and if she had done that it's quite certain that she would not have been accepted as warmly as she claims.)
***(p.279) then her family turns out to be Crypto Jews. Of course. (Do you know anybody who *doesn't* think that they are a member of the Lost tribes / Crypto Jews?)
In DNA tests were available at the time of publishing this book in order to settle this issue.
*******
2. I'm also not sure if the authors were aware of this, but a heavy fraction of people who convert to Judaism of any type (and especially Orthodoxy) are frankly insane--lots of personal experience in this aspect that is beyond the scope of this review, as well as an uncomfortable book by Bernice Weiss. (Choosing to be Jewish.)
This is not a small matter to me, because I also happen to be an Orthodox convert and for every single consecutive person that I meet that wants to convert/ has converted AND needs to be institutionalized....... It really makes me wonder who I am.
And let's be clear that the protagonist of this book was frankly insane.
Maybe if the co-author had been aware, then she would have been sensitive enough to choose a better example.
Of the book:
1. The prose is: gushing, bloated, phantasmagoric, and implausible. (Sample sentence: "I was left out in the dark, pleading to gain admittance through the hallowed doors of Judaism, until that momentous day 6 months before, when I finally stepped through the portal of my destiny.")
2. About 4 to 5 hours of reading time
3. In a nutshell, the protagonist is raised in a deeply religious (they seemed to have seventh-day Adventist tendencies) upper middle class family in California.
She goes through 10 children living hand to mouth, divorces and moves to Jerusalem.
And then remarries and has a blended family with 17 children. (This severely handicapped husband was also able to sire 7 children; I guess he was fully functional in at least *one* way.)
She eventually has extended family in Israel (none of whom go OTD, by the way).
That's it.
I just saved you 5 hours to read this book.
Verdict: not recommended
"The Mountain Family"
2/5 stars
"If the love child of Pollyanna and Mary Poppins overwrote an implausible book....."
*******
This book is not worth a second read and that's because it probably wasn't really even worth a first read.
Two major reasons:
1. I don't know how much I believe that this happened.
These books that I find published on labels (Artscroll/Mesorah/Feldheim) are just a little bit over the top when they are giving a hagiography of some person-- and let's be clear that that's what that is, because if you did not know that no one was perfect you would not find it out from any of these type books.
Specifically, I have in mind the character of Avraham ben Avraham in the (eponymous) book by Selig Schanowitz.
It's not even clear whether or not "Avraham ben Avraham" existed, but the author gave such glowing descriptions of all the characters in the book and intricate details of their conversations (from a couple of centuries ago) that it makes me believe that this is another one of those stories /haggadaot that have been told so many times and so vividly that people forget that *they never happened*.
And the purpose of this story is is not really even to narrate a historical event, but to create a narrative about how the scales fell from the eyes of so many people when they decided to convert from Xtianity to Judaism.
Or to lionize this or that Rabbi.
The fact that so much $hit in this book does not go together is what makes me believe that it didn't happen:
**The author grows up in an upper middle class West Coast family, but she decides to marry into a family of hillbillies and gives birth to 11 children while living in houses that didn't even have running water(!).
What sane person does that?
It would be one thing if she had grown up using outhouses all her life and kept on using them, but the thing is that she didn't. (And how do you deal with sexual odors with no running water? You do kind of wonder that since she conceived many times under those circumstances.)
***(p.135) Living in a tent? And homeschooling her children while they lived in a tent? It also appears that she conceived her 10th child while living in that tent.
***The author also claims to have read "thousands of books" (p.145). But couldn't learn to speak Hebrew?
***(p.174) She claims that people accepted her kids into a Jewish Day School before conversion, but I have a gold standard conversion and one out of the three local schools in Jewish Detroit (Darchei Torah) did not accept my kids because they did not want blacks or converts there. Also, they put her child right in the appropriate grade even though all of them had been homeschooled and therefore none of them had had any of the Judaic content necessary.
***People just came out of the woodwork to buy plane tickets for her children to go and study abroad in Yeshiva, even though she had not yet converted. Also, there would be the issue of a court converting a minor who would live / be under the care of a parent who was not Jewish.
***The converting Rabbi told her that if she lived through a year of Jewish holidays then the conversion would be finished--even though I have never heard of a rabbi giving a deadline for conversion.
***(p.182) Chabad outsources anti-missionary work to her before she even converts?
***This woman doesn't fill out a single job application, there is no single page where she meets somebody to talk about a job in order to fund these grand schemes moving from Atlanta to Baltimore. (WITH NO JOB!)
Do these things really make sense? (I think a wise old Jewish woman by the name of Judge Judy said that "if it doesn't make sense, then that's because it's not true.")
***Then her parents move to Israel (under what right of return?) and decide to stay Xtians. AND she keeps in contact with them? (Orthodox communities are justifiably EXTREMELY suspicious, and if she had done that it's quite certain that she would not have been accepted as warmly as she claims.)
***(p.279) then her family turns out to be Crypto Jews. Of course. (Do you know anybody who *doesn't* think that they are a member of the Lost tribes / Crypto Jews?)
In DNA tests were available at the time of publishing this book in order to settle this issue.
*******
2. I'm also not sure if the authors were aware of this, but a heavy fraction of people who convert to Judaism of any type (and especially Orthodoxy) are frankly insane--lots of personal experience in this aspect that is beyond the scope of this review, as well as an uncomfortable book by Bernice Weiss. (Choosing to be Jewish.)
This is not a small matter to me, because I also happen to be an Orthodox convert and for every single consecutive person that I meet that wants to convert/ has converted AND needs to be institutionalized....... It really makes me wonder who I am.
And let's be clear that the protagonist of this book was frankly insane.
Maybe if the co-author had been aware, then she would have been sensitive enough to choose a better example.
Of the book:
1. The prose is: gushing, bloated, phantasmagoric, and implausible. (Sample sentence: "I was left out in the dark, pleading to gain admittance through the hallowed doors of Judaism, until that momentous day 6 months before, when I finally stepped through the portal of my destiny.")
2. About 4 to 5 hours of reading time
3. In a nutshell, the protagonist is raised in a deeply religious (they seemed to have seventh-day Adventist tendencies) upper middle class family in California.
She goes through 10 children living hand to mouth, divorces and moves to Jerusalem.
And then remarries and has a blended family with 17 children. (This severely handicapped husband was also able to sire 7 children; I guess he was fully functional in at least *one* way.)
She eventually has extended family in Israel (none of whom go OTD, by the way).
That's it.
I just saved you 5 hours to read this book.
Verdict: not recommended
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 8, 2014
I think The Mountain Family is an excellent gift for the non-Jews and the frum-from-births in your life. These people will be rightfully awed by this surprising story and its crazy twists and turns. I don't think you could write a novel of this story because people would dismiss it as absurdly unlikely. I happened to speak with some FFB yeshivish people who had already read the book, and they were over the moon about it. I totally get why.
Personally, I think the book should have ended about 100 pages earlier, but that comes down to the author's choice of whether this book is about the conversion story alone or a memoir of the author. They chose to make this more of a memoir, but I think it would be more powerful if it stopped earlier.
Many of us love hearing about the story of other converts, so I think many converts and candidates will want to read this book for that reason alone. However, there is very little about the actual process and learning, if that is your primary interest in reading conversion stories.
Read a more detailed review on my blog: http://crazyjewishconvert.blogspot.co...
Personally, I think the book should have ended about 100 pages earlier, but that comes down to the author's choice of whether this book is about the conversion story alone or a memoir of the author. They chose to make this more of a memoir, but I think it would be more powerful if it stopped earlier.
Many of us love hearing about the story of other converts, so I think many converts and candidates will want to read this book for that reason alone. However, there is very little about the actual process and learning, if that is your primary interest in reading conversion stories.
Read a more detailed review on my blog: http://crazyjewishconvert.blogspot.co...
August 16, 2017
The success of Carolyn Chute's "The Beans of Egypt, Maine" proves that I'm not the only one curious about what mountain folk are really like. I was also mystified about why an Appalachian mountain family of 12 would all convert to Judaism and then move to a solidly Orthodox city in Israel.
Well, Sheryl Massey is not originally from Appalachia; her first husband grew up there. But she ended up living there and other similarly impoverished places for over twenty years while raising 10 children.
Sheryl was always searching. She grew up between two worlds: her strict, idealistic Christian family and California's liberal, secular public school system. Although her mother's side of the family occasionally whispered about a maternal Jewish ancestor who'd escaped to America from the Spanish Inquisition (and even displayed a pair of Sabbath candlesticks passed down throughout the generations), Sheryl's Christian father would not entertain any possibility that his pious Christian wife might actually be Jewish, nor would he let anyone else do so, either - especially his own children.
The more Sheryl delved into Christianity, the more questions she discovered. While she peeked into Islam and other religions, the antisemitism inherent in her community prevented her from exploring Judaism until much later, when inspired to do so by her first husband. I'd never realized how painful and difficult it is to drop Jesus and focus solely on God.
I found the description of Appalachian life fascinating -- what they eat, how they live, how they manage, their values, the dangers, the "whys" -- it is a diverse community ranging from good-hearted, trustworthy people to crass criminals. Her mother-in-law remained resigned to her poverty, saying, "Poor people have poor ways." If you've ever wondered whether such impoverished people are victims of their own lack of ambition or merely circumstance and "poor" luck, this book offers a surprising lot of insight into the issue.
Sheryl is a wonderfully idealistic mother and I loved learning how she created her own parenting methods.
Surprisingly, one of my favorite parts was Sheryl's second marriage to a hassidic man. The various anecdotes either moved me to tears or amused me to the point of laughing out loud. Seldom have I seen marital love described so compellingly and so genuinely.
The book includes a chapter written by Sheryl's oldest daughter, which shows us how she experienced being the first girl born after 5 boys, growing up in poverty, the transition to city life and Orthodox Judaism, then later acclimating to Israel and a new step-father.
If you're curious about "mountain folk," the culture of poverty, Christianity vs Judaism, spiritual journeys, recovering from the death of a child, the inside story on Orthodox Jews, life in Israel, etc., this book has a lot to offer.
Read less
Well, Sheryl Massey is not originally from Appalachia; her first husband grew up there. But she ended up living there and other similarly impoverished places for over twenty years while raising 10 children.
Sheryl was always searching. She grew up between two worlds: her strict, idealistic Christian family and California's liberal, secular public school system. Although her mother's side of the family occasionally whispered about a maternal Jewish ancestor who'd escaped to America from the Spanish Inquisition (and even displayed a pair of Sabbath candlesticks passed down throughout the generations), Sheryl's Christian father would not entertain any possibility that his pious Christian wife might actually be Jewish, nor would he let anyone else do so, either - especially his own children.
The more Sheryl delved into Christianity, the more questions she discovered. While she peeked into Islam and other religions, the antisemitism inherent in her community prevented her from exploring Judaism until much later, when inspired to do so by her first husband. I'd never realized how painful and difficult it is to drop Jesus and focus solely on God.
I found the description of Appalachian life fascinating -- what they eat, how they live, how they manage, their values, the dangers, the "whys" -- it is a diverse community ranging from good-hearted, trustworthy people to crass criminals. Her mother-in-law remained resigned to her poverty, saying, "Poor people have poor ways." If you've ever wondered whether such impoverished people are victims of their own lack of ambition or merely circumstance and "poor" luck, this book offers a surprising lot of insight into the issue.
Sheryl is a wonderfully idealistic mother and I loved learning how she created her own parenting methods.
Surprisingly, one of my favorite parts was Sheryl's second marriage to a hassidic man. The various anecdotes either moved me to tears or amused me to the point of laughing out loud. Seldom have I seen marital love described so compellingly and so genuinely.
The book includes a chapter written by Sheryl's oldest daughter, which shows us how she experienced being the first girl born after 5 boys, growing up in poverty, the transition to city life and Orthodox Judaism, then later acclimating to Israel and a new step-father.
If you're curious about "mountain folk," the culture of poverty, Christianity vs Judaism, spiritual journeys, recovering from the death of a child, the inside story on Orthodox Jews, life in Israel, etc., this book has a lot to offer.
Read less
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February 19, 2023With candor and courageous honesty, Tzirel presents the scrappy details of her Appalachian homeschooling-mother-of-10 life, where she forged her own path in homemaking, parenting, and ultimately her yiddishkeit. Far from a happily ever after, her conversion presented challenges throughout, and we witness her incredible commitment to living her ideals. An engaging and inspiring memoir that reads like fiction.
July 18, 2017
Stunning, yet very real. Inspirational on so many levels, as we're taken by the hand on a journey through the life of a woman in her constant search for truth, and determination to find where she belonged, through times both challenging and joyous.
January 12, 2025
Wonderful book!
May 1, 2017
If you did not know that this was a work of non-fiction, you would never believe it! This detailed description of the journey of a large family of hillbillies is surely unique. read as they travel from a log cabin in Appalachia without running water or plumbing, to find their place in the religious community of israel. You wont find a more unusual tale!
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews