One Hundred Philistine Foreskins

January 28, 2013
Reich’s satirical and incendiary fourth novel (after My Holocaust) takes aim with righteous rage at ultraorthodox Judaism’s subordination of women. Rather than rejecting rabbinical tradition wholesale, Reich’s novel seeks to rectify it by depicting a woman, Tema Bavli, as a miracle-working feminist rebbe who holds court over a countercommunity of religious refugees in Jerusalem. Tema spends her early years as a misunderstood prodigy in the cloistered Boro Park neighborhood of Brooklyn, N.Y., where her Talmudic studies take place through the cracks in the wall of a disused toilet adjacent to the study hall. Sexually abused by both her teacher and her father, and haunted by her mother’s suicide, Tema flees Brooklyn for the Holy Land through a marriage of convenience to religious Zionist Howie Stern. In Israel, Tema separates from her husband, has children with elderly luminary Toiter Rav and Black Jewish leader Abba Kadosh, and ultimately gains renown. A postmodern stew of pious rebellion, the novel is rife with allusions and nods to Judaism’s rich literature; accordingly, much will be lost on the uninitiated. Agent: Marly Rusoff, Marly Rusoff & Associates.

March 15, 2013
Shibboleth-smashing satirist Reich (My Holocaust, 2007) wrestles with the crushing paradox of Judaism and many other religionsthe denigration of women. Temima, a Jewish prodigy in Brooklyn, reads her way through the public library and the holy texts and becomes enraged by how women are universally dismissed and excluded. Add to that secret and appalling personal traumas, and Temima rebels, vowing never to marry. But matrimony is her ticket to Israel, where she becomes a radical holy wise woman healer, mother, and leader. Reich, who comes from a family of rabbis, spikes every churning, mesmerizing page in this riotous and righteous epic with acute reprisals of the Torah and Jewish customs, history, and conundrums while unspooling a deliriously inventive and barbed plot wild with sex, mysticism, politics, family betrayals, and wicked humor. With settings ranging from a former leper colony in Jerusalem to a tent city presided over by an African American ex-con claiming to be a descendant of one of the lost tribes, Reich's consummately crafted tale of a female messianic revolutionary is gloriously brilliant, audacious, and resounding.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)