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Thursday October 4, 2007

Writer can’t worship such a vengeful God

by ben harris
jta

Shalom Auslander believes in God. It’s been a real problem for him.

That refrain runs through his new memoir, “Foreskin’s Lament” (Riverhead), and with good reason.

Auslander’s God, the one he was taught to fear and obey by the Orthodox rabbis who instructed him for the better part of 20 years, is not a loving, benevolent God. He is murderous, angry and violent. He smites and He floods. He demands total submission and submits totally outrageous demands. And when his will is flouted, He exacts retribution.

In a few hours Sukkot will begin, but Auslander won’t be anywhere near a sukkah. Indeed, he stays as far away as possible from God these days. “We’re on a strict no-blessing policy on the house. I don’t mind doing things, but no God.”

The “theological abuse” he endured as a child — where he came to believe that a fickle accountant in the sky tabulates every misstep and spends his days concocting ironic means of exacting revenge — isn’t easily undone. He still believes in God. More to the point, he’s terrified of him. It’s a real problem.

“It doesn’t go away,” he says. “I’m a bit more rational about it. I don’t give him the finger as much as I used to — at least not physically.”

Auslander grew up in Monsey, N.Y. — like a “boxed-in veal,” he writes. He attended a yeshiva day school, went on to Yeshiva University’s high school for boys and spent two years at an Israeli institution known for rescuing wayward American Jews.

“I grew up around people who were terrorized,” he said. “Everybody I knew was terrorized. God was a scary thing.”

For the sake of his own mental health, Auslander hasn’t spoken to his family in years. In the book he describes them unsparingly, though with fleeting hints of affection. One person who does get a pass of sorts is Auslander’s uncle, the longtime president and current chancellor of Yeshiva University, Rabbi Norman Lamm. Auslander describes visiting the Manhattan apartment of his “Uncle Nathan,” a man who smoked cigars and bragged about his famous friends. Other names in the book are changed as well, and Auslander’s parents are never named, allowing the author to claim that the book was not fashioned as a personal attack.

It’s a claim that doesn’t ring true. Withering scenes of an unhappy childhood are anchored by the narrative of the birth of his son Paix and the attendant questions it raises of when, and how, God is going to kill the child. With a miscarriage? During childbirth, taking the mother as well? In a traffic accident returning from the hospital? (For the record, Paix is a healthy 3-year-old.)

From these questions emerges a deeper one: To circumcise or not to circumcise?

For a man with no discernible trace of nostalgia for his roots, it is a peculiar quandary. On the one hand, what better excuse does God need for smiting the baby than rejection of this cardinal rite? On the other, Auslander wonders why he has to mutilate his son just because thousands of years ago some madman believed God wanted him to mutilate his.

It’s a real problem.

In the end, keeping with the no-blessing policy, the couple has the baby circumcised by a doctor at the hospital. And the baby’s foreskin becomes a metaphor for Auslander himself — unwanted, shriveled and cut off.

Auslander says the writing was cathartic but hardly curative. “It was cathartic in the sense that I think it’s time believers got pissed off at God,” he says. “And if I can hasten that movement along, I’ll be very happy with myself.”

Shalom Auslander will be at the S.F. Jewish Bookfest from 12:45 p.m.-2 p.m. Sunday,

Nov. 4 at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco, 3200 California St. Information: (415) 292-1233 or www.jccsf.org.

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