Hush by Eishes Chayil

First of all, I would like to supplicate this book's publisher to issue it a new cover, since my first impression was that Hush was some sort of dystopian novel. It's not. It is a story of a girl growing up in an intensely isolated Jewish community in the heart of Brooklyn. When she is 9 years old, Gittel witnesses her best friend being raped, an act that has no word in the Chassidim vernacular. Gittel is forced to remain silent about the act by her parents and teachers, for fear of dishonor upon either family.


The book contains a graphic hanging. Gittel's inaction eventually led to her friend's suicide.


The author, Eishes Chayil, wrote this book from her own experience growing up in this community. I found a lot of interesting commentary (and lots of critique) of her old society in the book, from the brainwash-level isolationism to the discrepancies between teaching and action. In school, the kids are taught that all goyim, or non-Jews, are really evil on the inside and that it's really just a matter of time before they begin a second holocaust. The men can spend nearly every waking moment studying the Torah only to come home and say hurtful things to their wife. The preachers constantly warn of the outside world's materialism, yet young brides buy thousand-dollar wigs.


But the book is not all black and white; during a sleepover, a group of girls naughtily peruse an Oprah magazine, which does an incredibly good job of corroborating the preacher's warnings of gaudy materialism. And just because many of the laws and traditions governing the community are really rather lousy, it doesn't mean that certain individuals can't have nuggets of wisdom. For instance, Gittel's mother extols the virtues of a husband who willingly takes out the trash. A wise Rebbe (rabbi) admits that sexual abuse is a real problem in the community.


All in all, Hush is a good, if unspectacular, book. I would recommend it to anyone seeking to broaden their cultural horizon.