Jephte's Daughter [Hardcover]

Jephte's Daughter is the story of Batsheva Ha-Levi, the last surviving descendant of a Hassidic dynasty nearly wiped out in the Holocaust. A dutiful Orthodox Jewish daughter, she marries the man her father chooses for her--a renowned scholar--and moves off to Jerusalem to begin a life with him with nothing but youthful and vague romantic notions and her deep Jewish faith to guide her. In the disastrous marriage that follows, both fail her for a time, but ultimately her faith sustains her and gives her the courage to save herself and her son, and while she outgrows youthful romantic ideals, she ultimately finds love in the end.

If I had bought Jephte's Daughter in the new edition, packaged as women's literary fiction in trade size with an abstract design on the cover, I probably would have been as disappointed as many of the readers reviewing it here were. Yes, the storyline is often silly and unbelievable. Some of the supporting characters and dialogue are almost unbearably cheesy.

But I read the original paperback version of the book, published in 1989. The mass market paperback features an exotic Jerusalem backdrop and a beautiful long haired woman in the foreground, gazing out with longing and determination, and the cover art and packaging show the books true origins: not an Oprah-style literary novel, but a romantic saga of the kind that was so popular in the 1980s, of the Belva Plain/Judith Krantz variety. Judged as a product of the 1980s women's fiction market and not that of the 2000s, Jephte's Daughter actually succeeds pretty well, meeting the conventions of those stories (fabulous wealth, family history, bad experiences with men before the right one emerges, a strong central female character) but departing from them into the interesting setting of the Orthodox Jewish world.

The parts of the book showing Batsheva's upbringing and life in Jerusalem are the best parts of the book. Ragen's love for the rituals and the learning that suffuse traditional Jewish life is evident in the details that she pours into this part of the book. Batsheva's husband and mother in law are cartoonish bad guys, but underneath the soap opera melodrama are real issues, as Orthodox women in Israel sometimes do find themselves trapped by tradition and mores in disastrous marriages with abusive husbands who refuse to give them divorces.

The book weakens when it leaves this setting, and the section set in England is cringeworthy in its depiction of goyish male lust and snobbish anti-semitism. Some of the dialogue is simply laughable. And the man who ultimately turns out to be Batsheva's true love is unbelievably perfect. But the story was suspenseful enough to keep me turning pages quickly, even if I did wince at some of the worst dialogue and skim over the purplest prose.

I can't wholeheartedly recommend the book, but I know that the author, Naomi Ragen, has continued to write books set in the world of Orthodox Jewry which is a setting that fascinates me, and I know that her recent books have been fairly well received, so I would definitely read more of her work. Taken as a dated 1980s novel and a first novel at that, it's not horrible, but it probably should have been left back in the 1980s rather than dusted off and repackaged for current day release.

This is a made-for-TV movie in book form. It is so sloppy in its writing and editing that I almost wished for commercial breaks. The basic premise that this family would allow a free-thinking non-Jewish tutor into their home to work with their impressionable young daughter is so absurd as to be laughable. About 50 times you get to read about the main character's long legs and slim waist. She has no education but is accepted (embraced!) by intellectual cirles in London. She has no training but becomes an instant success as a photographer. One character fondly remembers his mother, except we were previously told she died when she gave birth to him. Events described don't add up in terms of a time line -- one character born in 1894 has a daughter who is a professor in Germany before the war -- so she was born when her father was 10? Jews are described in the most humiliating terms -- the Orthodox are continuously sweating and wiping their brows. This simplistic novel was a major disappointment.

I thought that this was a good book, interesting & engaging to read. However, I have to [say] that the storyline was not very believable. I found it strange that this very well educated & religious girl all of a sudden "forgets" that a married orthodox woman can't walk all over Jerusalem wearing pants, and with her hair uncovered. Most of non-Jewish women know that, but she didn't? And then a father that absolutely adored her up to the point she got married,all of a sudden decides that he won't help his only child? And a Christian would-be priest that "conviniently" discovers a Jewish mother seems a little too much, at least to me. Although I still enjoyed reading this book, in my opinion it wasn't as good as "Sotah", and "Sacrifice of Tamar" both of which I found absolutely amazing.

› Go to Amazon.com to see all 29 reviews  3.9 out of 5 stars