Rabbi's Daughter (Mann)

The Rabbi's Daughter
Reva Mann, 2007
Random House
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780385341431

Summary
In this honest, daring, and compulsively readable memoir, Reva Mann paints a portrait of herself as a young woman on the edge—of either revelation or self-destruction. The daughter of a highly respected London rabbi, Reva was a wild child, spiralling into a whirlwind of sex and drugs by the time she reached adolescence. But as a young woman, Reva had a startling mystical epiphany that led her to a women’s yeshivah in Israel, and eventually to marriage to the devoutly religious Torah scholar she thought would take her to ever greater heights of spirituality.

But can the path to spiritual fulfillment ever be compatible with the ecstasies of the flesh or with the everyday joys of intimacy and pleasure to which she is also strongly drawn? With unflinching candor, Reva shares her struggle to carve out a life that encompasses all the impulses at war within herself. An eye-opening glimpse into the world of the ultra-Orthodox and their elaborately coded rituals for eating, sleeping, bathing, and lovemaking, as well as a deeply personal rumination on identity, faith, and self-acceptance, The Rabbi’s Daughter is at its heart a universal story, a journey toward redemption that is an unforgettable read. (From the publisher.)

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Author Bio
• Aka—Reva Unterman
• Birth—1957
• Where—London, UK
• Education—Hebrew University; Neve Yerushalayim Seminary
• Currently—lives in Jersulam, Israel

Reva Unterman is a columnist and author who uses the pen name Reva Mann.

Mann is the granddaughter of the former Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi of the State of Israel, Isser Yehuda Unterman, and the daughter of Morris Unterman, rabbi of the West End Marble Arch synagogue in London. She was born in London but has lived in Israel since the mid-1980s. She attended a Jewish school in London until the age of ten. After her expulsion from Sinai College, a Jewish boarding school, her father sent her to Queen's College, a non-Jewish upper class high school.

Her autobiographical book, The Rabbi's Daughter: Sex, Drugs and Orthodoxy, describes her teenage experiments with sex and drugs, study at the Or Zion women's yeshiva in Jerusalem, and eventual return to the Orthodox fold.

Mann is a columnist for The Jewish Advocate and TotallyJewish.com. She is divorced with three children. (From Wikipedia.)

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Book Reviews
A gripping tale of a woman searching in all the wrong places.... The book is hard to put down—it’s so personal and raw.
Sunday Times Magazine (London)

Reva Mann reveals how she rejected the respectability of her London parents for years of wild partying and how she has won her battle with addiction.
Evening Standard (London)

Reva’s gripping memoir of her long journey to find herself. This first-time author has written a compelling book about her own experiences, and...insight into the closed world of Orthodox Judaism.... Her story is fascinating and harrowing in equal measure.
Daily Express (London)

There is more to this book than gratuitous sex...there are moments of profound insights.... Reva’s considerable talent with the English language and profound insights into Judaism are in evidence throughout the book.
Manchester Telegraph (UK)

Sometimes shocking, sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes very funny, Reva Mann’s story is a fascinating glimpse into a hidden world.
Elle

In her misspent youth, Mann, a journalist and daughter of a prominent London rabbi and granddaughter of a chief rabbi of Israel, was hooked on drugs and promiscuous sex, which led to hepatitis B infection and an arrest for drug possession. In her 20s, she went to Jerusalem, where again she disappointed her progressive Orthodox parents by marrying a born-again American Jew who had become an obsessive and separatist Hasid. Unhappiness and tragedy were Mann's constant companions: a retarded sister; the abortion of a brain-damaged fetus; the unraveling of her passionless marriage and her disenchantment with Hasidism; breast cancer; and her elderly widowed mother's suicide. Mann parades unsavory aspects of her behavior: she and her boyfriend, Sam, knowingly have raucous sex in earshot of her anxious children, and after Sam's brother is killed in a terrorist attack, Mann is upset that Sam isn't paying enough attention to her at the burial. While Mann's clever, fast-paced memoir offers an intimate glimpse of Orthodox Judaism and aptly demonstrates the human yearning for redemption, some of the events she recounts strain credulity, particularly her deflowering in her father's synagogue and a lesbian affair in an ultra-Orthodox women's yeshiva that is overheard by a religiously zealous tattletale.
Publishers Weekly

Mann tells her story with genuine humor and self-deprecating wit, winning the sympathy of even disapproving readers. Mann’s coming-of-age story speaks directly to young people struggling with questions of family, faith and identity.
Booklist

Jerusalem-based newspaper columnist Mann recounts her struggles with men, procrustean religion, drugs, sex, motherhood, breast cancer and the loss of loved ones. Employing the present tense throughout—perhaps to add an urgency that the narrative doesn't always deliver—the first-time author reveals a profound sadness at her center. The daughter and granddaughter of prominent rabbis, Mann rebelled as a teen with drugs and bad boyfriends. Reeling out of a troubled relationship with a druggie, she decided to move from London to Israel, where she studied midwifery and was attracted to the most fundamentalist form of Judaism she could find. She married a Hassidic scholar and adopted a pious lifestyle that puzzled even her father, a more moderate Jew. As she desperately sought happiness, she found herself increasingly repelled by her husband and his ways. Then a hunk of a handyman came to remodel the kitchen. Leers turned to frantic, clawing, biting sex-there is much explicit detail about her romps with this kitchen aide and with other lovers-which, of course, eventually led to the dissolution of her marriage and anguish for their three children. Later, another relationship with another slovenly drug addict went awry, but not before the author describes some luscious nubile bodies on a nude beach with nipples "soft and pink like candy." Lying on that same beach, she felt a lump, learned that she had breast cancer and endured surgery, chemo and radiation. Along the way, her father died, then her mom, in most disturbing fashion. The author then decides it's time to reunite with her sister, institutionalized back in England with Down's syndrome, whom she hasn't seen in 20 years. She vows to visit once a year from now on. A woeful life, related in prose that's largely hollow and unremarkable.
Kirkus Reviews

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Discussion Questions
1. Discuss the narrative approach used in The Rabbi's Daughter. What is it like to watch the events in Reva’s life unfold in the present tense, with occasional flashbacks to the past? Why do you think she chose to write in the present tense? Is this approach effective?

2. The Rabbi's Daughter explores many levels of intolerance. For example, Reva’s father, who is a religious man, has contempt for what he sees as the overly extreme religiosity of her husband, while the ultra-Orthodox look down on everyone who does not share their beliefs or their rigid adherence to the elaborate rituals and codes of behavior that govern their every act. Discuss how Reva reacts to these forms of intolerance, and how they shape the life she eventually chooses to lead.

3. Do you think being pregnant and becoming a mother changes Reva? How so? How does it affect her relationship with her own mother?

4. What do you think are the most important lessons that Reva carries over from her ultra-Orthodox life into the quite different way of life she has created for herself by the end of the book?

5. Men play a prominent role in Reva’s life. Discuss Reva’s romantic/sexual relationships with Chris, Simcha, and Sam. How do these relationships differ from one another and what does each bring her? Does Reva change through her encounters with each man? How so?

6. Why is Reva’s relationship with her father so strained? Why was it easier for her to relate to her grandfather, despite the fact that he was even more pious than her father?

7. Why is Reva drawn to Simcha? Do you think her initial doubts about him are well-founded? What role does Simcha play toward the end of the book? Do your initial impressions of him change?

8. When her mother dies, Reva decides to visit the sister she had not seen in twenty years. Why? Do you think her mother’s death played a role in that difficult decision? How did Reva feel about the visit?

9. During the course of the years described in this book, Reva must come to terms with the illness and death of both parents, and must face up to her own mortality as well. How do you think these experiences change her?

10. Describe your thoughts on the following passage that opens the third chapter (p. 58): “It is not good that man should be alone; I will make a helpmate for him (Genesis 2:18).” How does it illustrate the woman’s role in society according to the Old Testament? How does Reva feel about being a “helpmate?”

11. Do you think the chapter titles are appropriate? Do the Scripture and Talmudic writings present each chapter effectively?

12. Reva says, “I am jealous of his ability to study the holy books into the night while I have been trashing the very values written there” (page 234). Is this inner conflict ever resolved? Does Reva find a balance between her spiritual self and her sensual self?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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