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Houses of Study: A Jewish Woman among Books
To learn was to live, and to learn well was to live well. This was the lesson of both cultures of the Modern Orthodox Jewish world in which Ilana Blumberg was educated, with its commitment to traditional Jewish practice and ideas alongside an appreciation for modern, secular wisdom. But when the paths of Jewish tradition and secular wisdom inevitably diverge, applying this lesson can become extraordinarily tricky, especially for a woman. Blumberg’s memoir of negotiating these two worlds is the story of how a Jewish woman’s life was shaped by a passion for learning; it is also a rare look into the life of Modern Orthodoxy, the twentieth-century movement of Judaism that tries to reconcile modernity with tradition.
Blumberg traces her own path from a childhood immersed in Hebrew and classical Judaic texts as well as Anglo-American novels and biographies, to a womanhood where the two literatures suddenly represent mutually exclusive possibilities for life. Set in “houses of study,” from a Jewish grammar school and high school to a Jerusalem yeshiva for women to a secular American university, her memoir asks, in an intimate and poignant what happens when the traditional Jewish ideal of learning asserts itself in a body that is female—a body directed by that same tradition toward a life of modesty, early marriage, and motherhood?
Blumberg traces her own path from a childhood immersed in Hebrew and classical Judaic texts as well as Anglo-American novels and biographies, to a womanhood where the two literatures suddenly represent mutually exclusive possibilities for life. Set in “houses of study,” from a Jewish grammar school and high school to a Jerusalem yeshiva for women to a secular American university, her memoir asks, in an intimate and poignant what happens when the traditional Jewish ideal of learning asserts itself in a body that is female—a body directed by that same tradition toward a life of modesty, early marriage, and motherhood?
182 pages, Hardcover
First published March 1, 2007
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
February 16, 2009
I had very mixed feelings about this book, a poetic but vague memoir of a woman who grows up Conservadox/Modern Orthodox, studies in Brovender's for a year, gets her Ph.D. in English Literature, has an intense affair with a non-Jewish man to her family's chagrin, and ultimately marries a non-religious Jew but remains religious and affiliated with an Orthodox minyan (the Hillel in Ann Arbor, go figure!), albeit with very conflicted feelings about her desire for both religious authenticity and religious egalitarianism.
Although my life followed a different trajectory, I could relate personally to many of her themes and experiences as one might expect. I was hoping that this would make for an exciting and meaningful reading experience for me. Unfortunately, it did not.
While I sometimes appreciated her lyrical tone and many passages resonated with me, I often felt that the poetic and frequently abstract descriptions came at the expense of solid details which would have made Ilana's struggle clear for me and more relatable. Reading this book recalled a book I read many years ago, Straight Talk My Dilemma As an Orthodox Jewish Woman. The latter book suffered from frequent rambling and practically cried for an editor, and was, as my husband aptly put it, "one long yentafest." The writing was far less sophisticated than Blumberg's, but Berkovic's struggles, outlined in great detail, were far more understandable to me than Blumberg's.
What was Ilana's problem, exactly? That she couldn't chant from the Torah before a congregation? I'm not minimizing that issue, which is a painful one for many women, but I would have liked to know more about what happened around it. We hear in an almost offhand fashion how Ilana was active in organizing a women's minyan and then became disillusioned with it, even as the minyan itself became stronger. Why? What was that about? At the end of the book, Ilana reflects on the strides Orthodoxy has made since her day in terms of making room for women in ritual, but continues to appear dissatisfied with this progress. She's entitled to her pessimism, but as a reader, I would like to understand it better. This was a reaction I felt generally throughout the book.
This book deserves three stars because the writing was decent, and because it (arguably) escapes being just another one of those angry Orthodox memoirs. Her issues with religion are clearly different from those of Shalom Auslander and some others of that ilk. I just wish they had been a little more fully articulated.
Although my life followed a different trajectory, I could relate personally to many of her themes and experiences as one might expect. I was hoping that this would make for an exciting and meaningful reading experience for me. Unfortunately, it did not.
While I sometimes appreciated her lyrical tone and many passages resonated with me, I often felt that the poetic and frequently abstract descriptions came at the expense of solid details which would have made Ilana's struggle clear for me and more relatable. Reading this book recalled a book I read many years ago, Straight Talk My Dilemma As an Orthodox Jewish Woman. The latter book suffered from frequent rambling and practically cried for an editor, and was, as my husband aptly put it, "one long yentafest." The writing was far less sophisticated than Blumberg's, but Berkovic's struggles, outlined in great detail, were far more understandable to me than Blumberg's.
What was Ilana's problem, exactly? That she couldn't chant from the Torah before a congregation? I'm not minimizing that issue, which is a painful one for many women, but I would have liked to know more about what happened around it. We hear in an almost offhand fashion how Ilana was active in organizing a women's minyan and then became disillusioned with it, even as the minyan itself became stronger. Why? What was that about? At the end of the book, Ilana reflects on the strides Orthodoxy has made since her day in terms of making room for women in ritual, but continues to appear dissatisfied with this progress. She's entitled to her pessimism, but as a reader, I would like to understand it better. This was a reaction I felt generally throughout the book.
This book deserves three stars because the writing was decent, and because it (arguably) escapes being just another one of those angry Orthodox memoirs. Her issues with religion are clearly different from those of Shalom Auslander and some others of that ilk. I just wish they had been a little more fully articulated.
January 11, 2016
Autobiography of a life that could have been mine? I found this book well written, intriguing, compelling. How to balance a choice between observant religious, feminism, academic professorship in English literature in the late 20th century to current day. Fascinating.
March 23, 2018
Not what I expected, though I suppose that esoteric language about books, study and religious practice fits the bill. Still, I found it to be a little ungrounded.
Ostensibly, this 173-page memoir is supposed to chronicle Blumberg's experiences in various religious and academic study environments. And she does do that, from her religious elementary school where she learned Hebrew in a church, to the Beit Midrash of her Modern Orthodox high school adorned with the biblical line "Know before whom you stand", to the not-quite-yeshiva that she attended for a year in Jerusalem and the cramped women's study space that she and her religious female friends founded in college. Also having to do with college, libraries and lecture halls where she learned to appreciate the words of Victorians, particularly George Elliot.
Most sections of the book started with a specific date at top, an anchor of sorts to ground us to part of Blumberg's life, though she also moved around a bit in all of them. The first section, Binah, named for something religiously feminine, "the ability to know one thing from another," is the one that's just sort of out there. It seems that it's a piece of theoretical writing that she'd been trying to write about her experiences of learning as a woman since the 1980s.
There's a lot of beautiful phrases in here, ranging from the power of books, her grandfather's hand in celebrating modern Hebrew and acting as a signpost for Orthodox Jews to learn it, to the physical dimensions of learning spaces where women may or may not feel that they belong. There's also the difference between studying biblical commentaries to something much different in secular literature, where authors aren't seen as quite so authoritative. And there's lots about different practices of Judaism, from Blumberg's "Conservadox" upbringing--her parents often more traditional, but wanting to raise her egalitarian where they could--but they actually had to move when Blumberg was in high school for the lack of religious schools. Blumberg poses, showing how central religious education is to her identity, why would any school stop at 14?
As a Jew with a far less thorough grasp of religious textual study, much less in Hebrew, I was fascinated and a little jealous of this world. I was also an English major--I love the power of story--though I'm a little hesitant of my traditional prowess in that arena, too. I'm very bad at remembering quotes, for one thing. And if I were to claim that I understood a writer's works, it would probably be someone contemporary, someone I read on my own, rather than most of the academic "classical" authors. But I could feel the power of that world--these stories written down in secular literature and the bible, plus all of their commentaries--and how it makes you understand humanity in a deeper way.
When it comes to women, I picked up early on Blumberg's allusions to Virginia Woolf's A ROOM OF ONE'S OWN, where she and her female friends are looking for a place within a traditional setting to learn, and to define their lives as more than marriage, motherhood, etc. By the time Blumberg addressed it directly, she acknowledged that the metaphor can only go so far, because to be a writer a woman can be alone, but to be a Jewish student, you need community. And that requires some leeway from men. Times are changing in the Modern Orthodox community, Blumberg wrote in 2007, where she, and woman of her education, are university scholars, she suggests, perhaps because they can't be ordained as rabbis. But now, conferences and learning spaces, the "houses of study" to put it religiously, are continuing to open up to women.
I think this is beautiful and complex about the place that Blumberg, and many Modern Orthodox women, aspire to have in the world. But I can't help but wish that the writing style and central message were a little more traditional and tight.
Ostensibly, this 173-page memoir is supposed to chronicle Blumberg's experiences in various religious and academic study environments. And she does do that, from her religious elementary school where she learned Hebrew in a church, to the Beit Midrash of her Modern Orthodox high school adorned with the biblical line "Know before whom you stand", to the not-quite-yeshiva that she attended for a year in Jerusalem and the cramped women's study space that she and her religious female friends founded in college. Also having to do with college, libraries and lecture halls where she learned to appreciate the words of Victorians, particularly George Elliot.
Most sections of the book started with a specific date at top, an anchor of sorts to ground us to part of Blumberg's life, though she also moved around a bit in all of them. The first section, Binah, named for something religiously feminine, "the ability to know one thing from another," is the one that's just sort of out there. It seems that it's a piece of theoretical writing that she'd been trying to write about her experiences of learning as a woman since the 1980s.
There's a lot of beautiful phrases in here, ranging from the power of books, her grandfather's hand in celebrating modern Hebrew and acting as a signpost for Orthodox Jews to learn it, to the physical dimensions of learning spaces where women may or may not feel that they belong. There's also the difference between studying biblical commentaries to something much different in secular literature, where authors aren't seen as quite so authoritative. And there's lots about different practices of Judaism, from Blumberg's "Conservadox" upbringing--her parents often more traditional, but wanting to raise her egalitarian where they could--but they actually had to move when Blumberg was in high school for the lack of religious schools. Blumberg poses, showing how central religious education is to her identity, why would any school stop at 14?
As a Jew with a far less thorough grasp of religious textual study, much less in Hebrew, I was fascinated and a little jealous of this world. I was also an English major--I love the power of story--though I'm a little hesitant of my traditional prowess in that arena, too. I'm very bad at remembering quotes, for one thing. And if I were to claim that I understood a writer's works, it would probably be someone contemporary, someone I read on my own, rather than most of the academic "classical" authors. But I could feel the power of that world--these stories written down in secular literature and the bible, plus all of their commentaries--and how it makes you understand humanity in a deeper way.
When it comes to women, I picked up early on Blumberg's allusions to Virginia Woolf's A ROOM OF ONE'S OWN, where she and her female friends are looking for a place within a traditional setting to learn, and to define their lives as more than marriage, motherhood, etc. By the time Blumberg addressed it directly, she acknowledged that the metaphor can only go so far, because to be a writer a woman can be alone, but to be a Jewish student, you need community. And that requires some leeway from men. Times are changing in the Modern Orthodox community, Blumberg wrote in 2007, where she, and woman of her education, are university scholars, she suggests, perhaps because they can't be ordained as rabbis. But now, conferences and learning spaces, the "houses of study" to put it religiously, are continuing to open up to women.
I think this is beautiful and complex about the place that Blumberg, and many Modern Orthodox women, aspire to have in the world. But I can't help but wish that the writing style and central message were a little more traditional and tight.
December 15, 2021
It took me about 1/3 to actually start liking the book, another few pages to enjoy it, and then it took me forever to finish it because I never wanted it to end.
August 19, 2019
Ilana Blumberg is the head of the Master’s of English Literature program at Bar Ilan University, and I met her on my recent trip to Israel. I’m really impressed by the program she’s running and intrigued by her other memoir, which is specifically about teaching. This one is about finding her place in the Jewish faith, and so in that sense, it’s a parallel experience to the one I’d write about in my own memoir, except she was raised Modern Orthodox and became more feminist whereas I was raised secular and became Hasidic.
The book should have been right up my alley. She drew from many of the familiar Jewish sources I know and love, and she’s a George Eliot scholar to boot. But there’s a lot going on in my personal life right now, so I found my mind wandering as I made my through. It’s interesting in parts, but not uniformly compelling. I think the problem was that the story is more intellectual than emotional. Or maybe the problem was just me.
The book should have been right up my alley. She drew from many of the familiar Jewish sources I know and love, and she’s a George Eliot scholar to boot. But there’s a lot going on in my personal life right now, so I found my mind wandering as I made my through. It’s interesting in parts, but not uniformly compelling. I think the problem was that the story is more intellectual than emotional. Or maybe the problem was just me.
May 13, 2017
She somehow knows my secret heart's whispers I could not name. I did not grow up in Orthodox Jewry. I'm not even Jewish at all. I did however grow up in an ultra-conservative, charismatic Christian denomination so she speaks to my quandary with intensely loving yet being confused by my faith. Growing up restrained by my gender and limitations of teaching offered, she explained the personal aching and yearning I felt trying to find and quench my spiritual roots.
And then there's the love of books. She plays and loves books as I do.
Balancing sacred with secular and passion of faith and romance, I'm not quite sure how she did it, but, she wrote my love, my life, and my reverence for it all. (This is at least my second or third read of the book.)
And then there's the love of books. She plays and loves books as I do.
Balancing sacred with secular and passion of faith and romance, I'm not quite sure how she did it, but, she wrote my love, my life, and my reverence for it all. (This is at least my second or third read of the book.)
April 28, 2008
WOW. Taking words from a defunct organization, Ms Blumberg (a Barnard alumna) has the courage to be mordern and orthodox and balance and understand. This isn’t “I have it all! Look at me!” book, but a wonderful memoir of someone I can look to as a sister and know that it’s not easy, but perhaps in time I can find the balance I seek. It’s a beautifully written book and had been on my reading list for ages. I’m not sure why I didn’t purchased it and waited instead for the library hold to come in.
January 6, 2008
Autobiographical account of an orthodox Jewish woman, and the inequalities she meets and works to overcome as a woman in orthodox scholarship and learning.
July 2, 2009
Ilana Blumberg was a wonderful teacher, and I really liked her memoir as well.
November 5, 2016
a book by a woman who loves books about growing up in a family that loves books in a culture defined by its love for a book! I love it.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews