From the Stacks: 'I Am Forbidden' follows Jewish women in struggle between choice and tradition

"I Am Forbidden" by Anouk Markovits
"I Am Forbidden" by Anouk Markovits

In her English language debut, "I Am Forbidden," author Anouk Markovits introduces the reader to the insular, hidden world of Satmar Jews. This ultra-Orthodox, Hasidic sect severely limits the education of girls because their duty is to marry and bear children. The men devote themselves to the study of the Torah, known to Christians as the Old Testament.

"I Am Forbidden" opens with a character named Judith in 2005: "I am forbidden, so are my children, and my children's children, forbidden for ten generations male or female." The reader is left to ponder this mysterious statement as the author quickly whisks us back in time to 1939 Transylvania, where 5-year old Josef is witness to the murder of his family by a member of the anti-Semitic Romanian Iron Guard.

Several years later, Josef saves the life of Mila, whose parents are killed amid the Nazi deportations. Josef directs Mila to the safety of the household of Zalman Stern, a leader in the Satmar community. She is taken in and raised as a sister to Atara Stern. We follow Mila and Atara as they grow up in this fundamentalist Jewish household and as the family moves to Paris to escape the growing communist movement in Central Europe.

Zalman struggles to keep his children away from secular influences in their new country. Mila lovingly embraces her religion and its strictures, never questioning anything it requires of her. Atara discovers the world of books and learning and begins to chafe against the religious constraints that leave only one path open to her: marry within her sect and begin having babies. Unwilling to submit to a religion that doesn't allow her a choice in her future, she slips away one night, knowing she will be dead to her family, and Mila, from this point forward.

Mila follows her predetermined path and marries. However, after 10 years of a childless marriage her religious tradition permits, even expects, her husband to divorce her because, as Markovits writes, "an Orthodox Jew may not abstain any longer from keeping the command to be fruitful and multiply."

Although her husband has shown no inclination to take such an action and is deeply in love with her, Mila, blinded by her religious devotion, makes a desperate choice that sets in motion a chain of events that will affect her children and grandchildren when her secret is uncovered. It will also bring the shunned Atara back into her life as Mila frantically tries to find a way to save her family from the terrible price her religion, to which she has willingly sacrificed so much of herself, demands they pay for her transgression.

As I read this book, I struggled to understand how someone could give up all self-determination to the demands of religion. It let me peek into a world I know absolutely nothing about, an infuriating world that values women only for their capacity to bear children. I only wish we had heard more about Atara's struggles and successes after she made the heart-wrenching decision to leave and be forever separated from her family. Perhaps Markovits will tackle this story, which mirrors her own life, in another book.

Lisa Sanning is adult services librarian at Missouri River Regional Library and also helps plan and run a monthly library program for millennials.