Inside the closed community of Borough Park, where Brooklyn's Chassidim live, the rules of life - everything from how to dress to whom to marry - are very clear, determined to the last detail by an ancient script written thousands of years before. Then young Gittel witnesses an unspeakable act of violence against her best friend, Devory, an act that goes against everything she's been taught as a Jew. For the first time in her life, there are no guidelines to tell her what to do, so she remains silent. But even inaction has consequences, and sometimes they are deadly.
Now a teenager, Gittel is racked with guilt over the choices she made and those that were forced upon her by the community she once trusted. She must question everything about herself - her own innocence, her memories of the past, and the beliefs of her sect - to find peace for Devory and for herself.
Hush bears a lot of similarities to Fox Girl - starting with the opening narration. In Fox Girl, Hyun Jin dreams of her friend Sookie, from years past; in Hush, Gittel speaks to her best friend, Devory, whom we are told is dead. I really enjoyed Hush, and I hope that anyone reading this will not be dissuaded from picking it up when I say it resembles Fox Girl once again, as it deals with child sexual abuse, albeit in a radically different setting. Hush is set in a Jewish Orthodox community in New York in 2008, although it could easily have taken place anytime in the last fifty years, as the readers realize how little this community has changed, and indeed how they make this immutability a canon of their religious and social lives. The particular Chassidim (perhaps more commonly known as Hasidic Jews) in Hush are fictionalized (as is the author's name - Eishes Chayil is a pseudonym meaning Woman of Valor), but that a large pocket of such people live in Borough Park in Brooklyn is not. In fact, if you watch The Daily Show, you may recall an episode about the erection of an eruv in Westhampton Beach in March of this year, which is a boundary line enclosing a Chassidic community space. They also made the news last month, in much sadder circumstances, when a young Chassidic boy was found dismembered after a two-day long search after he missing on his way home from school. And now that I've made you all depressed, time to talk about Hush!
Besides being a moving book about child abuse and trauma, it's also an engrossing peek into an entirely different kind of world (at least for me, and I dunno about you all, but I doubt very much I have a large, or even existent, Hasidic readership. Feel free to lambast me about it in the comments). It is a world so divorced from my own experiences, I did doubt at times that it was even possible. How could one maintain such ignorance and such isolation in this period of over-sharing and intrusiveness? Gittel, to us, has only a child's knowledge of the world - she doesn't know facts about the human body that I learned by the time I was ten - and one of craziest (and most hilarious) scenes in the book is when she gets into an argument with her husband about the fact that she has breasts. Cause, you know, he's never seen 'em on a Chassidish woman before. At last, the bra's true purpose of destroying the very fabric of society is revealed!
Hush is actually two halves - the first is set in 2008 and flashes back to 1999, when Devory and Gittel are nine years old. The second half takes place entirely in the present, from 2008 to 2010. Hush concerns itself more with the aftereffects of the trauma than the trauma itself. We see the terrible burden that being the survivor has placed on Gittel. The problem here is not that no one cares about what is being done to their children, but that in a community which prides itself on adherence to rules they have been following for thousands of years, and a vast gulf between their world and the outside world, there is no outlet for this situation. It is a shameful secret which brings more condemnation on those who tell their stories and rock the boat than on those who commit the assault. These things are hushed up, not to protect the perpetrators, but to protect the innocent.
The results are predictably catastrophic. With no way to comprehend what she has seen, and no outlet for her questions and her story, Gittel turns all her guilt inward. Even though she was only a child, and even though she did her best to speak for Devory, she winds up blaming herself for not doing more, for not bringing the wrath of the community down on her, if it would have saved her friend. One thing I particularly liked about this book was the loving relationship Gittel had with her own family, especially her father. Her parents don't repress her out of malice, but out of love, out of the knowledge that Gittel's future will be forever stained if the truth comes out. And even though you shrink from a community which has such beliefs that they would punish the victim over the abuser, by the end of the book, you realize that this isn't because of any ill-motive, but because they see this as one more threat to their way of life, a way of life that they have all fought hard to maintain. It is the great irony of the book that such terrible actions come from a place of love. I've tagged this entry as "tragedy" but it isn't, really, because by the end of the book, Gittel has spoken, and she has opened a light into this world, and it has not destroyed them all.
The first half of the book is Gittel coming to terms herself with what happened, and finally being able to name it as rape. I liked the second half better, since it had more humor, but this part was compelling and necessary to realize the impact that it had on her, years later. Gittel was in the position of seeing Devory's cries for help, but being unable to do anything about them. You feel though her not only the trauma of having seen this horror, but having everyone pretend that it did not happen, which compounds the original horror tenfold. It is only through her goyim (non-Jewish) neighbor that she gathers the courage to speak to a social worker about it.
The second half deals with Gittel's marriage, and her publication of the truth. I will admit, I cried a bit when Gittel wrote her public letter to Devory. Which is the greater crime, the rape of a nine-year old child, or the systematic repression of the truth? I can only hope that a similar sea change is sweeping the Orthodox community, as it is only with knowledge and openness that such crimes can be combated.
I was incredibly fascinated with all the details of Gittel's life - the ban on pets and televisions, the one-track future for the girls, the ritualized cleaning, the expensive hats, the arranged marriages, and the pressure to bear children. Gittel and her husband are two perfectly reasonable, nice people, and yet the rigid guidelines of their lives put them so much at odds. The only thing keeping them together is this common faith, and yet that same faith prohibits even a comforting touch, or a frank discussion. It's a wonder to think that more people don't go round the twist.
Hush is certainly eye-opening, and it's an incredible account simply of what it means to be a Hasidic girl in New York. It also manages to make the Chassidim sympthetic, which is harder than it sounds, given that they have allowed child sexual abuse to flourish under their watch, out of fear. Gittel is also a charming narrator, and you get a feel for her character - stubborn and just as difficult as any adolescent going through puberty, and yet godly and strong in her faith. I was exceptionally pleased for her when her husband turned out to be such a stand up fellow. There is such a danger of abuse, given that this faith and community rests on the fragile pact each member has made to abide by the rules, which are obviously not designed for slackers.
The author has the ability to find the humor in the odd situations her characters' background puts them in, like when Gittel and her parents get so excited about a possible match they forget to ask his name or even if he speaks English, or when Gittel gets into a debate with her cousin about which sect is holier, the litvish or the Chassidish, and it devolves into an argument about whether a husband ought to help his wife with the dishes. As it turns out, nine year-olds are nine year-olds and teenagers are teenagers no matter if they grow up to get married at eighteen, or go on to a co-ed dormitory in college. Everyone has had that experience of accidentally turning out the lights on Shabbos, and everyone has sulked about the resultant scolding.
At last, we end on a message of forgiveness and hope, and of a bright future for Gittel, in which the memory of Devory has finally been sapped of its bitterness. Gittel says that the day of marriage is when a Jew is reborn, but it seems to me that Gittel gets reborn the day she's finally able to say goodbye to Devory.
And a final note to apologize if I screwed up any of them tenses of terms - I'm not sure about the endings on some of the words, so I sort of went with what made sense at the time.
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