Keep Your Wives Away from Them: Orthodox Women, Unorthodox Desires ed. by Miryam Kabakov (review)

If Orthodox Jew and lesbian may at one point have seemed contradictory identities, then allow Miryam Kabakov and the writers in her edited collection to show once again why this is no longer the case. The release of Keep Your Wives Away from Them in 2010 situates it amongst a wave of books reconciling Jewish and queer identities. The past ten years have been a renaissance of sorts in literature surrounding LGBTQ Jews. Shneer and Aviv's (2002) Queer Jews and Dzmura's (2010) Balancing on the Mechitza offer personal accounts of coalescing Jewish and LGBTQ identities, and Drinkwater's (2009) Torah Queeries and Boyarin, Itzkovitz and Pellegrini's (2003) Queer Theory and the Jewish Question provide theoretical, historical, political, and religious understanding to the intersection of Jewish and queer identities. Where once works on the subject were few and far between, now educators choosing books for course syllabi and lay readers in search of better personal understanding have an abundance of books from which to choose.

Kabakov's contribution adds a variety of personal narratives by Orthodox lesbians. Described by the editor as an anthology meant to "shed a new light on the resilience of individuals and communities who live at the intersection of conflicting religious and sexual identities" (xi), Wives offers stories about both the hardship and beauty of coming to terms with one's Orthodox-lesbian self. Many of these obstacles are struggles common to all lesbians, and so it is their uniquely Jewish experiences and interpretations that give depth to the process of coming out and being a lesbian. Woven throughout the essays are stories of the initial conflict each woman faced when confronted with choosing between her sexuality and religion, the process of learning how to be an Orthodox Jewish lesbian, and the importance of studying Torah to find lesbian identity in Jewish history and within Jewish law.

Temin Fruchter's story of sexual transgression begins at a youth group getaway when she hugs a boy and breaks the laws of shomer negiyah, the laws forbidding touching people of the opposite sex. She describes the transgressive act as a "queer hug." For Fruchter, the hug was not simply the act of "a sheltered frum girl hugging a sheltered frum boy" but a "glimpse of my own desire" as complicated and "different from that of some of the other kids on the playground." (9) Years later, on her first night at college, when a woman named Jamie asks if she likes girls, Fruchter was again confronted with her transgressive sexuality, this time however, also its adult realities. "Looking at Jamie in that moment and saying Yes would have felt like closing the door on my family and my community forever" she says, concluding, "I didn't get that Both was an option." (11) Geo Bloom reiterates the fear of loss when she describes her perception of being openly gay as: "automatically to lose everything." (27) And Devorah Miriam's interviews with Jerusalem Orthodykes reveals that most religious lesbians "at some point in their lives have tried opting for one identity and leaving the other behind" but that choosing one option over another is not "possible as a long term solution." (42) As such, the women have learned to accept ambiguity and paradox as "irreducible parts of our lives" and by "thorough investigation of Jewish law" they are able to claim "both identities." (43) Miriam's piece goes beyond interviewing Orthodykes about their lived experiences and asks them about their theoretical understandings of sexuality. Using Audre Lorde's observation that "there are no hierarchies of oppression," Orthodykes argue homophobia in the Jewish community is equally as poisonous as anti-Semitism in the gentile world. Furthermore, while Judaism may forbid same-sex relationships, living a loveless life is, according to Jewish law, emotionally dangerous. And living a lie (life in a heterosexual relationship) is spiritually dangerous.

Encounter with an...