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Devil in the Details: Scenes from an Obsessive Girlhood

Jennifer Traig

Devil in the Details is a hoot: if being a teenager of inter-married, chaotic, California-based parents in the 1980s isn't enough to drive a kid nuts, this young woman suffers from OCD—Obsessive, Compulsive Disorder. And what religion lends itself better to OCD than Orthodox Judaism, which is what the young protagonist flirts with endlessly? As she notes early in this very, very funny book, "Scrupulosity is sometimes called the doubting disease, because it forces you to question everything. Anything you do or say or wear or hear or eat or think, you examine in excruciatingly minute detail. Will I go to hell if I watch HBO? Is it sacrilegious to shop wholesale? What is the biblical position on organic produce? One question leads directly to the next, like beads on a rosary, each doubt a pearl to rub and worry. Foundation garments, beverages, reading material: for the scrupulous, no matter is too mundane for a dissertation-length theological interrogation. Oh, we have fun."

If I quoted every funny line—some of them admittedly forced—I'd end up duplicating all 242 pages, and get sued for copyright infringement. Now, OCD isn't a very enjoyable "disease," but in the hands of the deliciously-witty Ms. Traig, you can hardly stop laughing. The real theme of the book comes on page 33, when the author notes, "The problem may be that traditional Jewish observance and compulsive behavior are almost too close to differentiate. Judaism has codified a whole choreography of compulsive, compulsory gestures and tics. We reach up to touch a mezuzah each time we pass a doorway. We kiss the prayer book when we close it, the Torah when we approach it, any religious object when we drop it. We cover our eyes when we say the Shema prayer. . . ." Yet, lest you think such views border on sacrilegious, here is the author a few lines later: "Orthodox Jews are motivated by spiritual duty and rewarded by a sense of fulfillment; the scrupulous are motivated by circuitry and rewarded by chapped hands. . . . If, however, you happen to be both compulsive and Jewish, you're in for the ride of your life." Hilarious. And so true.

I was utterly charmed by this sweet, unassuming, but wondrously comic and beautifully-written book. It ain't the Marx Brothers, or Philip Roth at his most zany, but it sure is fun to read.

Jennifer Traig has also produced the hilarious: Judaikitsch: Tchotchkes, Schmattes and Nosherei, with creative re-interpretations of Jewish rirtual and cultural objects, such as the Neil Tsedakah box.

A Charming Work of Jewish Fiction;
An Utterly Brilliant Work of Yiddish Scholarship

Born to Kvetch

Michael Wex, Harpercollins, Paperback - 336 pages (ISBN: 0061132179) (Also available on audio cassette)

reviewed by Allan Gould

Several years ago, I came across a marvelous quotation from a prominent American theatre critic between the wars, who once wrote, "I am always depressed when I go to a comedy on Broadway, because I know it won't be the Marx Brothers, tonight." (His point being, those geniuses had already moved to Hollywood, and nothing could ever match their inspired antics that once ruled the New York stages in the late 1920s). The same goes for me: I often go depressed to new musicals, knowing that they won't be by Stephen Sondheim; I am always depressed when I go to see a new drama: it will never be King Lear.

But one must always remain open to a potentially highly-pleasing new writer. And I was most pleased to read Devil in the Details (sub-titled "scenes from an obsessive girlhood") by a young American journalist, Jennifer Traig. It's an uproarious little paperback from 2004 (recommended by my rebbe, Elyse Goldstein). See sidebar. And, even more so, by Born to Kvetch (sub-titled "Yiddish Language and Culture in All of Its Moods," by a most gifted, entertaining and scholarly Yiddishist—and Torontonian—named Michael Wex.

I want to praise this book to the hilt, and beg you to buy and read it to your aging parents or grandparents (and lover/spouse). From the hilarious cover photo-- a little Chassidic boy with endless sidelocks/payos, wearing an old-man's hat, frowning into the camera-- one might think Born to Kvetch, by Michael Wex is a kitchy book on Yiddish humour. But this book is actually a marvel, and not merely because it keeps saying the same things about Jewish humour, wit, and the power of Yiddish that I've been saying for years, when I lecture on those subjects; Wex is a real expert on Jewish history, the growth and changes in Yiddish over the past millennium, and more. Best of all, he is profoundly insightful: he knows that there is wonderful joy—and pain—in the language of the much-abused Jewish people of Central and Eastern Europe, and he is often-shockingly honest in what rage and anger exists in so much of this great, now-murdered tongue. (As the great Isaac Bashevis Singer declared in his Nobel Prize speech for Literature, "I write for ghosts." If Hitler did not put an end to this grand, unique tongue, he certainly hammered 95% of the nails in its coffin.)

What I love most about Born to Kvetch is Wex's profound understanding of comedy and its discontents. When he gives us the English translation of the Yiddish expression, "Six Feet Under, Baking Bagels," he has the comic sensibility to explain the great wit in that line, which answers the question, "how is business?" or "how is your health?" The saying means, "not only is my business/health in the grave, but it's also baking bagels—so it's even hotter than hell, and there's no one alive in hell to sell the bagels that I'm baking, to."

The chapter titles are enough to send you into uncontrollable laughter: "Kvetch Que C'est?" "You Should Grow Like an Onion: The Yiddish Curse." (the end of that curse goes, "with your head in the ground and your feet in the air"; it's one of my favourite of the thousands of glorious Yiddish curses—and who has more reason to curse the world, our condescending, even murderous neighbours, each other, than the Jews?) "Too Good for the Goyim: Sex in Yiddish." "It Should Happen to You: Death in Yiddish." And so on.

This is a very special book. A classic of its kind. Not merely a collection of Yiddish words, with cute little jokes to explain each one (as we got in Rosten's The Joys of Yiddish, a huge best-seller of decades ago), this is a dangerously wise, bitter, angry, profound, scholarly book—kind of like the Yiddish language and the Jewish people who spoke it for centuries. You will bless me for urging you to read it. Wex told me recently that "it earned back its advance-against royalties in the first week." With good reason. What a book!

Allan Gould is a regular book critic for Kolel. He is the author of over three dozen books, his latest being Anne of Green Gables vs. G.I. Joe—Friendly Fire Between the U.S. and Canada, a work of political satire.

Devil in the Details: Scenes from an Obsessive Girlhood

Jennifer Traig

A Charming Work of Jewish Fiction; An Utterly Brilliant Work of Yiddish Scholarship

Born to Kvetch

Michael Wex, Harpercollins, Paperback - 336 pages (ISBN: 0061132179) (Also available on audio cassette)

reviewed by Allan Gould

A Charming Work of Jewish Fiction;
An Utterly Brilliant Work of Yiddish Scholarship