Bøger af Michael Lesher

". . . a number of memoirs have been published by people who . . . made the journey away from ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities. Michael Lesher's beautifully written book explores that trajectory in reverse . . . a deeply personal account of what religious Jews would call his 'return' to Judaism."-Hella Winston, sociologist, investigative journalist and author of books including, Unchosen: The Hidden Lives of Hasidic Rebels In this memoir of Jewishness, Michael Lesher explores his decision to reroute his life as a secular Jew into Orthodox Judaism. There are many other Jews who, like Michael, have recently moved back toward traditional religion. (There's even a popular phrase among the Orthodox: "B.T.," short for the Hebrew phrase "ba'alei t'shuvah, " or "those who return.") And this pattern is probably part of a general religious trend rightward in today's United States. But Michael didn't choose a religious life as part of a social trend. Nor is his story as simple as a steady movement in one direction. His questions haven't stopped, they have only evolved. And he is evolving with them. This is a story, for better or worse, about transformation rather than certainty. About how excavating one's religious past, with all its values, influences and limitations, carries its own rewards.

Michael Lesher's Surfaces is a celebration of what might be called the central paradox of poetry: that every attempt to plumb the depths of lived experience must begin, and end, in the impenetrable surface world of words printed on paper. Somehow, the shape of a collection of letters placed on a page, and the sounds they produce when pronounced, have to convey a sense of the most inward levels of experience. This would appear impossible, and the collection's introductory quotation from Ralph Waldo Emerson -- "Give me truths;/for I am weary of the surfaces,/and die of inanition" -- only underscores the difficulty. Yet the goal of these poems is precisely to find those "truths" not by fleeing the surface of poetry -- line, rhythm, diction, and so on -- but by embracing it. And in doing so, of course, to reveal beauty as well.

This book--the first of its kind--analyzes how and why cases of child sexual abuse have been systematically concealed in Orthodox Jewish communities. The book examines many such cover-ups in detail, showing how denial, backlash against victims, and the manipulation of the secular justice system have placed Orthodox Jewish community leaders in the position of defending or even enabling child abusers. The book also examines the generally disappointing treatment of this issue in popular media, while dissecting the institutions that contribute to the cover-ups, including two--rabbinic courts and local Orthodox "patrols"--that are more or less unique to Orthodox Jewish communities. Finally, the book explores the cultural factors that have contributed to this tragedy, and concludes with hopes and proposals for future reform.