Foreskin's Lament: A Memoir

Darkly humorous, deeply bitter memoir about growing up in an unhappy ultra-Orthodox Jewish household. Unlike a lot of reviewers, I wouldn't really put this in the same category as Sedaris or Burroughs, whose books seem comparatively lighthearted, even when discussing the most traumatic events.

While I far prefer his short stories in Beware of God, this book still contained some brilliant writing. And enough horror stories to significantly up my anxiety over ever putting Jefferson in Sunday School or Vacation Bible School. I want to send Shalom (who acknowledges my sister at the end of the book) a copy of Love Poems from God, particularly the poem that asks why the men and women of this world keep drawing in their coloring books pictures of a God that makes them sad.

Cynical and funny, yes funny....but strangely the "funnier" it gets the more Auslander's deep-seated, and disconcerting anger shows up. He believes he is angry at G-d but really it's his parents and the community in which he grew up. His relationship with G-d is more love / hate which tethers him, husband and father, to a quasi child-like state. I seriously hope he works through many of his issues before he becomes a replica of his father if he hasn't already. I worry for the safety of his wife and son. Why do the Ultra-Orthodox lie to their children about G-d's expectations of them? Why use deception to coerce children to conform? Why not allow them the freedom to learn secular subjects and about other cultures without denigrating those studies? Are the Ultra-Orthodox so insecure in their beliefs they think they can trick and threaten their children into staying within the community? What do they think will happen when some of those who think for themselves grow up and realize most of what they been told are falsehoods, exaggerations and absurd lies?

Anger begets anger. This is a very bitter, angry, skewed look at a religious upbringing. Auslander depicts his father as a mean and unpredictable drunk, and apparently has conflated his ideas about God with his ideas about his father. The book, which I had hoped would be humorous, turned out to be a decidedly unfunny, repetitious, boring rant. The author comes across as being stuck in adolescent rebellion and still engaging in magical thinking, trying to bargain with a God he doesn't really believe in. In the end the reader is left feeling sad and very sorry for the author, who has a pretty good life now, but can't seem to enjoy any of it.

Shalom Auslander depicts himself as a miserable person. In all senses of the word.It was pretty whiny, depressing, and bitter rather than funny or biting for the most part, but there were some very funny moments, somewhere beyond Chapter 4. I can see why my wife didn't like it, but I'm glad I finished it. The acknowledgement may be the most funny acknowledgements I've read (listened to) ever.He's not so much Woody Allen as he is a god fearing (emphasis on the fearing) Droopy the Dog who feels deeply scarred for life by family, community, and theology.

The author has suffered a close encounter with his own religion and been subjected to a full anal probing. I know a lot of people like this kind of thing, but Auslander has not enjoyed the experience. Not at all.This is a very funny book. I only read it because I found the title funny, and luckily it’s funny all the way through. But it’s humour and rage mixed. Auslander is seething with rage. It’s quite something to behold. I think he might be quite an intimidating man face to face.It’s transgressive in itself and rather a voyeuristic experience to take a peek into a stranger’s family. Particularly interesting are the similarities between the author and his father and they ways they cope (or fail to cope) with what has been done to them. Also very interesting for the window he provides into a fundamentalist sect. A couple of times I was put in mind of my mother who had an extremist Catholic upbringing.

Oh, I loved this.And in a way, it's sort of nice to read about somebody whose childhood was even more screwed up than mine was.I kinda want to say more, but that way lies a very long blog post.

Ich hatte vorher schon die Bücher in Englisch und in Deutsch gelesen und fand sie einfach herrlich. Der Sprecher hat dieses Buch einfach wunderbar wiedergegeben. Der Autor des Buches beschreibt in sehr humorvoller Weise seine Kindheit in einer Jüdisch Orthodoxen Gemeinde. Seine Ängste, seine kindlichen Schlussfolgerungen über Gott und sein im Alter zunehmender Glaube das Gott böse ist. Man bekommt auch einen guten Einblick in einige dieser starren Verhaltensregeln und kann gut nachvollziehen warum Shalom Auslander seinen Glauben so kritisch betrachtet und Probleme hatte sich damit anzufreunden. Man kann diese Geschichte immer wieder hören ohne das es langweilig wird. Es ist einfach eine wunderbar neurotische Geschichte mit einem guten Schuss Sarkasmus und Zynismus. SEHR EMPFEHLENSWERT

Auslander has a lot of palpable anger in this book and I appreciated that. I'm always looking for stories of people wrestling with faith and religion, and while I appreciated his anger, I wish he would have analyzed his problems with judiasm more, rather than presenting it as this big, pointless hassle.

welllll, this was funny but kind of too much of a good thing. I think it's better to hear it in bits and pieces on NPR rather than just sit and read it in one lump.

Shalom Auslander depicts himself as a miserable person. In all senses of the word.It was pretty whiny, depressing, and bitter rather than funny or biting for the most part, but there were some very funny moments, somewhere beyond Chapter 4. I can see why my wife didn't like it, but I'm glad I finished it. The acknowledgement may be the most funny acknowledgements I've read (listened to) ever.He's not so much Woody Allen as he is a god fearing (emphasis on the fearing) Droopy the Dog who feels deeply scarred for life by family, community, and theology.

Hilarious, scandalous, touching and clearly written with wide open eyes to the trials of growing up in an insular extremely religious community. That the father is sadistic and the adolescent brilliant but troubled just adds to the interest. This could have been a serious 'how I gave up orthodox Judaism and rejected my parents' novel, but instead is a scatological comedy with many tender overtones. I loved it.

Shalom Auslander looks back at his childhood and his teens, his rigid upbringing as an Orthodox Jew, while in the present he is awaiting the birth of his first child; he strings to two side by side until he brings us up to date. It is an account written with economy, openly and frankly, he does not shy back from saying what thinks, and the butt of most of his criticism is the Creator, followed by his (hypocritical) parents. Shalom Auslander’s memoir is very funny, irreverent to the extreme, but also perhaps very sad. He seems to land on his feet eventually, but not without a great deal of heartache and loss along the way. He sees his Creator as a vengeful, spiteful entity who repays his sins with potential calamities, and much of the humour here is derived from his attempts at bargaining in connection with this, and it is very funny. But one cannot but think how unfortunate he has been with his upbringing; not only living with the hypocrisy, but bound to a set of beliefs so petty as to consider sitting on the grass on the Sabbath a sin as it might constitute printing should any stain from the grass transfer to one’s clothes (the Creator, if one believes in such, has to be more than that surely?) That is just one of the numerous possible sins Auslander cites in his memoir. But sadly his Yeshiva education seems to have ignored the Creator’s cardinal quality, Love. But that seems hardly surprising as it failed in other areas too: Moses’ sin was not in striking the rock to draw water as he repeatedly says and was presumably taught, but a quite different failure in connection with that act (Numbers chp 20 vs 12); a failure from which one could possibly learn.I can imagine many will be shocked by Auslander’s memoir, the language alone might well cause upset, but if that does not the profanity almost certainly for some will; I have to admit that I cringed more than a few times. But I would urge all to read it, not because it is uproariously funny, which it is, but because there is a significant lesson to be learned here whatever one’s beliefs.

Oh, I loved this.And in a way, it's sort of nice to read about somebody whose childhood was even more screwed up than mine was.I kinda want to say more, but that way lies a very long blog post.

Enjoyable for the most part, but Auslander's neuroses are more serious than I knew from listening to him on This American Life. I loved the local color in the childhood sections, set in New York City, but at times his rants against God's apparent cruelty become tedious. This book may actually improve in the audio format, since his deadpan delivery a la Ben Stein helps bring out the humor and sarcasm.

I first heard the author on episodes of This American Life. This is a darkly comic and painfully honest memoir that traces his relationship with God from his strict Orthodox upbringing through his present-day life as a religious, but not observant, adult. Highly recommended, though not for those squeamish about profanity and crises of faith.

Anger begets anger. This is a very bitter, angry, skewed look at a religious upbringing. Auslander depicts his father as a mean and unpredictable drunk, and apparently has conflated his ideas about God with his ideas about his father. The book, which I had hoped would be humorous, turned out to be a decidedly unfunny, repetitious, boring rant. The author comes across as being stuck in adolescent rebellion and still engaging in magical thinking, trying to bargain with a God he doesn't really believe in. In the end the reader is left feeling sad and very sorry for the author, who has a pretty good life now, but can't seem to enjoy any of it.

My first reaction to reading this biography was to question why so many reviewers dubbed this book “hilarious”. I admit it was entertaining and even slightly amusing, but rather than humorous, I found it quite sad. It’s the personal story of the author’s growing up in a family belonging to an ultra-Orthodox Jewish community in Monsey, New York. To further complicate the author’s rigid upbringing within the tight religious requirements of that community, he came from a family with a father who seemed very abrupt and angry as well as a mother whose life seemed to be dominated purely by those strict religious rules. For someone who grows up in a nurturing, loving family, a strict religion may be comforting. Not so for someone who grows up with the absence of a sense of well-being. Such a person wants to reject what he doesn’t like by being antagonistic and acting out. Over and over, Auslander purposely acted contrary to the rules of his religion. Oddly enough, doing that never gave him much of a sense of peace.Beware, readers, of uncensored blasphemy in this book. Some might find this blatantly offensive. I cringed quite a few times in reading this book, but I found Auslander’s story rather interesting despite his harsh way of telling it. I tried to push aside its irreverent tone to understand what this very angry author was trying to say. He equated his upbringing to that of a veal being raised in a cramped box, always trapped and subject to whatever befell him and unable to escape. I wonder if Auslander’s anger towards his parents became an all-encompassing fury that was more easily directed to God, who may or may not exist, but nevertheless became a powerful symbol of the potential for of punishment throughout this book.As I was reading about Auslander’s background, I thoroughly enjoyed the many specific references to Judaism because they seemed very familiar to me. I especially liked the chapter about the “bracha bee” which was a contest at Auslander’s school in which the students had to name which blessing went with which type of food. I remember that contest from my Hebrew school days! In the middle of reading this book, I felt I needed to know more about the author so I tuned into an NPR interview (the link is on the author page here on LibraryThing) with Auslander to see what he was all about. My reaction to hearing him interviewed was that his book is pretty much on the money. That’s who he is. I wish him well. I liked his book. I also liked his line, "That is so God".

This is an extremely angry book, but pretty darn funny as well. I won't pretend that my own devout religious upbringing was anywhere close to as strict as Auslander's - but a lot of theological wrestling rings a bell with me.

Like the author's wife says, "They really did a number on you." Auslander is an angry man, who cannot stop himself from trying to make deals with God, with sometimes sad and sometimes hilarious results. Even though at its core lies a very sad childhood and a very sad child, Auslander has a fantastic sense of humor coupled with impeccable timing and I actually laughed out loud quite a few times (sometimes while reading in public, which caused some raised eyebrows, especially when I flipped the cover over and revealed its title). It's juvenile and insightful and heartbreaking and very, very, very funny, all in one package. I feel really bad for Auslander himself, but I can't help but be grateful that he managed to live through it and become a writer so he could share the insanity with the rest of us.

Foreskin's Lament was notable for its absolutely hilarious voice, this deadpan, I'm-so-mad-at-you-God, arrested-development author who has apparently been all over NPR all the time and yet I've not managed to hear him but once. Anyway, Shalom takes great umbrage when his deeply Orthodox friends and family describe him (treyf-eating, electricity-using) as not religious instead of not observant. On Shabbat, he walks fifteen miles to Madison Square Garden to watch the Rangers lose a Stanley Cup game, eats a hot dog as a big kiss-off to God afterwards, but guarantees that God will make them win the Cup just to piss him off more. Pair with God Is Not Great for a rollicking romp through the many ways religion can deform you!

Auslander can be an entertaining writer, but this account of deliverance from religious orthodoxy is excessively egocentric and paranoid.

Some things I've learned about Shalom Auslander:- He believes in God. This is a problem.- He thinks God has a mean sense of humor and that he is often the punchline.- He fears that God will smite him, his wife, his child, his parents, and his siblings.- He had a very messed up family, but no more messed up than most religiously, fundamentalist families.- He paid $350/hour for a psychiatrist.- He needed it.Auslander's memoir is often funny, but incredibly painful to read.

I rarely laugh out loud while reading a book, but this dark satiric look at Shalom's relationship with God had me hooting out loud. In this memoir the author recounts his struggles growing up Orthodox Jew, and tracking the myriad of things that will piss off God, and his mom, dad, the rabbi....From shoplifting to studying in Israel, to walking, with his wife, 14 miles to see a Ranger's game (in order to partially keep the Sabbath, according to Shalom's accounting), the absurd and the sublime do a dark tango in this wonderful book.If you're easily offended, or ultra-sensitive about religion, this isn't for you.

A memoir of growing up Orthodox. Shalom's family was abusive as well as religious leaving him with a very problematic relationship with God (and sex). The narrative is primarily set in his childhood with glimpses into his marriage and impending fatherhood. Some of the reviews criticize this book for its anger, but I think sometimes anger is appropriate--not every look at troubled childhoods could or should end with forgiveness or even understanding. Oh, and it's really funny.

I have heard Shalom Auslander on Public Radio International's "This American Life" several times in the past, and I always told myself that I would read this book when I "had time." When I got ready to purchase it, I was a little scared of the numerous "bad" reviews on Amazon, but decided to go ahead and give it a try, since he is always funny on TAL. I am very happy I decided to read it, because there were many parts that were laugh out loud funny. Yes, there were some parts that (as a Christian) I found off-putting, but I knew that those things would be in the book when I started reading it. Personally, the stories I liked more were the ones about his childhood, (but not the parental abuse ones) and experiences in Hebrew school, but the stories of his adulthood were also enjoyable, but many of those were just sad, as opposed to humorous. All in all, I enjoyed the book, and I will probably re-read parts of it again.

I laughed out loud, actually I got this book because I had heard the author read one of the essays, chapter 2 of this book, on NPR's "This American Life," and laughed out load at that and knew I had to read more. It turns out it's one of the more lighthearted in this collection of autobiographical essays, but there are sudden flashes of anger and bitterness that take you by surprise and make you gasp. There you are laughing at the ridiculousness of trying to interpret which food deserves which blessing when suddenly BAM the author's father, drunk on Sabbath eve, is abusing the family, while his mother stands by helpless to protect them. Auslander seems almost proud of his refusal to see them today. He even takes some pride in his anxiety-of-influence relation to Roth, and the fact that his excoriation at the hands of his community is deeper and wider than Roth's. But isn't his point made without having to quote from his sister's angry correspondence to him about not having a bris, and his own hilarious but unforgivable reply?Meanwhile, his wife comes through as a character of tremendous gravitas in the circumcision chapter and another about being Rangers fans, and the challenges presented by a postseason in which many games are on the Sabbath. Overall, however, the author wraps his anger at his parents, at God, and at his community in humor, carelessly so the fury is never truly contained. But he has the tools to work his material successfully into something more serious--the chapter about his sojourn in Israel, for example, and his betrayal there by a girl and by God, is an example.So can we really expect him to forgive his father for the damage done to him as a child? He asks us not to demand that of him. But there's a poignant moment from his childhood: walking home from the synagogue, he reflects on the congregation's lack of appreciation for his father's superlative carpentry, which expressed itself in a lovely new ark for their new Torah. Now, he says, they are getting old. time is running out: "For what, I don't know." Come on, Shalom! Is there some hope for reconciliation between parents and child there, sometime, ever?

Hilarious, amazing, totally neurotic. I can't recommend this enough. It is short and leaves you wanting more. He's a great writer.

Auslander writes with all the wit and sardonic irony of Philip Roth but without the misogyny and, in spite of a lot of R-rated dialogue, without the scatological aftertaste of Roth’s work. Plus, he’ll have you laughing out loud. And unlike Roth, who claimed "Portnoy's Complaint" was "a novel in the guise of a confession," Auslander's interviews indicate this book is a confession in the guise of a novel. (On Roth, see "The New York Review of Books," October 3, 1974; on Auslander, see "The Portland Mercury," October 17, 2008.)In one sense it is a book about searching for one’s identity, about wandering in the desert to reach the Promised Land. So many are searching for their roles in life, Auslander observes: straight men pretending to be gay (and thus more valued for their taste in wine and home furnishings), white kids pretending to be black, and black kids pretending to be West Coast gangsters. And he refers throughout the story to his own search for a Promised Land “with no God, at least not with the God I knew….” But more specifically, he seems to be seeking what Ruth Wisse, Harvard Professor of Literature, described as the goal of the contemporary Jewish reader of secular books, i.e., "a synthesis between a culture he is supposed to have inherited and the one of which he forms a part" ("Commentary," March 1980).He also wants control over his life. Both in the here, and the hereafter. Although this book is a memoir about growing up as an orthodox Jew, it is for anyone who survived a childhood worrying that an all-powerful God would discover his or her personal departures from faith and virtue, and what the potential repercussions would be, both earthly and eternal. Auslander wonders if he suffers from a metaphysical form of Stockholm syndrome. “Held captive by this man for thousands of years, we now praise Him, defend Him, excuse Him, sometimes kill for Him….” Auslander maintains that while he may not be observant, he is “painfully, cripplingly, incurably, miserably religious.” In fact, he says, he is like a foreskin, the part of the male member that is removed during circumcision. What is it to be a foreskin? It is to be “brutalized, cast off, and cut repeatedly.” It is to have been “theologically abused.”He constantly questions God, taunts God, bargains with God, and excoriates God. Some people are offended, he notes, if you refer to God as a “prick” but he says he is surprised at this. “Because they’re the ones who told me He was. They told me all about Him – about the floods, the pillars of salt, the killing, the slaughtering, that He was quick to anger yet full of mercy, that He was stiff-necked but forgiving, that he flew off the eternal handle with frightening regularity – that He was, basically, a prick.” There is both "pain and poignancy" in Auslander's jeremiad, to paraphrase Michael Chabon's imagining of the Golem, the Jewish mythical man of clay invoked by Jews in time of need. The Golem was a creature, said Chabon, "who never asked to be made, whose fate is ... thoroughly shaped by his parents' [and God's] intentions, might and desire, whose relationship to life is ... tenuous and easily erased" (Chabon in "Pakn Trager," Winter 2002). And like the Golem, Auslander is asked to be a magical figure for his parents, to be someone who can forestall death and misery (for them) by living an orthodox life.All of this sounds rather dire, but a very funny black humor lightens the pathos. Or, as the Yiddish expression would have it, you will "lachen mit yashcherkes" (laugh with lizards). This colorful characterization of gallows humor means: I'm laughing but it is not funny; it is actually very sad.Auslander relives for us not only his flirtations with faith, but his flirtations with apostasy, from stuffing his mouth with Slim Jims (spitting them out, buying more, punching his stomach, buying more) to acquiring pornography (burning it out in the yard, buying more), to shoplifting (it works better if you dress in Orthodox Jewish attire) to watching television on the Sabbath (and cheering for his team with his face hidden in rolled up towels so the Jewish neighbors don’t know what he’s doing). He has some very clever turns of phrase. He describes the handwritten prayer notes that are stuffed into Jerusalem’s Wailing Wall as “a gruesome gray grout of helplessness and despair.”This is his description of a blonde girl in a bikini (he imagines her name is “Tiffany”): “Her swimsuit was tiny, nothing more than a pair of miniature white yarmulkes tied to the tips of her breasts and a shiny white hamentash wedged between her legs.” (A hamentash is the triangular-shaped pastry that Jews eat on the holiday of Purim, and is also, in colloquial use, a way of referring to the very woman’s parts that this particular hamentash was covering up.)When “Tiffany”’s boyfriend (whom Auslander names “Vinnie”) bites into a hot dog, Auslander “stared, openmouthed… It was as if he’d never even heard of Leviticus 11:7.” Auslander discovers he likes art, attributing the predilection to the fact that “It seemed so wonderfully self-indulgent, so delightfully worthless. World to Come-wise.”There are so many gems in this book. I loved it, and was sorry when I finished. Auslander may not be as demonstrably brilliant as Philip Roth, but he sure is a lot more likable.

I liked this one, although I found it a little slow going at first. It was great to see another perspective on my home area.