SHMUTZ

Two worlds meet unexpectedly as a Hasidic woman struggles with a porn addiction.

Raizl, the protagonist of Berliner’s debut, is an 18-year-old Hasidic woman attending college to get an accounting degree. She also has a part-time job to help support her family. For these reasons, she’s allowed a laptop. This is uncommon and slightly scandalous; many in her community only have “kosher” phones or do not use smartphones or computers at all. In a culture that prizes and often mandates conformity, any sort of deviation may raise eyebrows. But Raizl’s schooling, employment, and access to the computer are the least of her deviations. She has a shocking secret: She’s addicted to internet porn. Given not only the taboo surrounding the secular internet, but also the stringent religious laws around sex and marriage, this is unthinkable in her community. As Raizl struggles to balance her job, her education, her complex family dynamics, her religious obligations, therapy, and the shidduch (matchmaking) process, her porn addiction threatens to tear her life apart. Other secular temptations—such as nonkosher food from street carts—also cause her to stray further and further from what is expected of her. The narrative has built-in suspense—Raizl’s situation is so absurd, so precarious that surely it will come to a head of some kind—but unfortunately, it takes too long for that to happen. The first half of the book drags, with little plot or even character development. Part of Berliner’s goal seems to be to humanize and tell an unexpected story about an underrepresented and much-stereotyped community; for that, she must be commended. Her representations of Hasidic culture and the Yiddish language are thorough and fluent. She also succeeds admirably in diverging from the overdone “off the derech” (leaving the Orthodox community) narrative; Raizl’s story, and her relationship to Hasidism, is much more nuanced than the oversimple tale of an oppressed woman fleeing an oppressive culture. Ultimately, however, these attributes fail to redeem a plodding story.

A promising and unique premise that falters in its execution.