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Nathalie Rothschild
posted 12 April 2006

The orthodox Jewish communities that live in large modern cities such as London and New York rarely make themselves known to the wider public. It seems that they do not feel the need for acknowledgement or appreciation of their traditions, customs and beliefs from the outside. Instead, insularity is necessary for the preservation of their traditional way of life. In other words, outsiders need not apply.

But in the past couple of months, the British public has had a chance to peek into these closed communities, for instance in Josh Appignanesi's debut film Song of Songs, a claustrophobic tale of a sibling relationship gone inappropriate in Hendon. Naomi Alderman's Disobedience tells another story of taboos and misbehaviour amongst the orthodox Jews of Hendon, and of what happens when a child of the community returns after years away.

In Disobedience, the secular and the religious, the liberal and the conservative, the gay and the Jewish do not so much clash as find convenient marriages. Gayness and Jewishness, the main character, Ronit, muses, are invisible states of being that one does not choose for oneself. Ronit's conclusion, that 'if you are, you are. There's nothing you can do to change it' only finds relief in her assertion that what you can choose is whether you practise or not. What defines you, therefore, is the identity you were born into and the ways in which you chose to embrace or reject it.

Whether or not Ronit's conclusions are shared by the character's author, who like Ronit, is a Hendon native who has spent some time in New York, is not really relevant. But because Alderman's writing at times reads like a sermon and because her two-dimensional characters serve the purpose of proving her unambiguous points, the author's presence is rarely forgotten.

Disobedience tells the story of Ronit, the daughter of a revered rabbi, who returns home from New York upon her father's death. With a high-powered job in Manhattan, and an on-off affair with her all-American married boss, Scott, Ronit is something of an ex-orthodox-Jew-in-the-city. She derides the narrow-mindedness of her childhood community, but it is clear that she has herself failed to find meaning in life. Her job gives her financial, but not emotional or spiritual stability. Ronit no longer prays to God, but she interprets her emotions and dreams through the words of her therapist Dr. Feingold. The only analysis left out of the novel is that the female therapist is Ronit's male God-substitute.

Ronit returns to Hendon to find that her childhood friend Esti, with whom she discovered her bi-sexuality, has stayed behind and married her cousin Dovid, the deceased rabbi's protégé. Dovid stands out as the one character in the love triangle who cannot be easily pigeonholed, whom the reader must instead figure out. The others are there as signpost, as starkly juxtaposed typecasts.

For all the flaws in developing her characters, Alderman does know how to keep the reader's attention, alternating between Ronit's first person narrative and the stories of Esti and Dovid written in third person. The strength of the book is where Alderman displays her insight into Jewish religion and customs, which adds depth and meaning to the situations of the characters. The novel has more originality and freshness when Alderman allows her own presence to be diminished.

It is also to Alderman's credit that the reader does not necessarily need to have an understanding of the Hebrew words and Jewish references scattered throughout the novel in order to appreciate it. But, unfortunately, in this respect too, Alderman's self-consciousness shines through. In one of Ronit's rants, she vents her frustration with British Jews and their reticence when it comes to vocalising a Jewish perspective in the public realm. In New York, however, she has found Jewish writers 'who know, confidently, that people who aren't Jewish will be interested in what they have to say too. Who aren't afraid to use Jewish words, or refer to Jewish holidays or Jewish customs, because they trust their readers to understand what they're talking about'. This is indeed what Alderman does herself in Disobedience, but why, then, doesn't she just trust her own readers to understand that?

Alderman cleverly mimics the Jewish tradition of interpreting and commenting on God's commandments and on prayers, blessings and portions of the Torah in the opening paragraphs of each chapter, and then lets the reader see the parallels and contradictions between the teachings of religion and the behaviour of its practitioners. Recounting the sages' warnings against lashon hara, the evil tongue, for instance, she then leads us back into the story and shows how the women of Hendon do not always manage to resist that temptation. This results in false rumours as to the exact circumstances of that kiss between Ronit and Esti.

Though aspects of Disobedience may well upset the community Alderman is writing about, it comes out as an appeasing story of the virtues of religion, tradition and identity and the ways they can be reconciled with a modern lifestyle - a 'religion lite'. Not exactly a controversial or transgressive message, but rather quite conventional.

In today's climate of identity politics, we are more used to individuals and communities demanding recognition of their identities than insisting on keeping them to themselves. In aiming to lift the lid on the orthodox Jewish community in Hendon, Alderman disobeys its self-selected insularity, shedding as much light on the outside world's voyeuristic curiosity as on that community's way of life.

Longlisted for the 2006 Orange Prize.