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Auslander - Foreskins Lament: A Memoir The Litany of the Holy Prepuce aka Deep-Fried Golden Onion Rings

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Auslander Foreskins Lament: A Memoir The Litany of the Holy Prepuce aka Deep-Fried Golden Onion Rings
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Foreskins Lament: A Memoir The Litany of the Holy Prepuce aka Deep-Fried Golden Onion Rings: summary, description and annotation

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A New York Times Notable Book, and a chaotic, laugh riot (San Francisco Chronicle) of a memoir.
Shalom Auslander was raised with a terrified respect for God. Even as he grew up and was estranged from his community, his religion and its traditions, he could not find the path to a life where he didnt struggle daily with the fear of Gods formidable wrath. Foreskins Lament reveals Auslanders painfully, cripplingly, incurably, miserably religious youth in a strict, socially isolated Orthodox Jewish community, and recounts his rebellion and efforts to make a new life apart from it. His combination of unrelenting humor and anger renders a rich and fascinating portrait of a man grappling with his faith and family.

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Foreskins Lament
A LSO BY S HALOM A USLANDER

Beware of God: Stories

Foreskins Lament

A Memoir

SHALOM AUSLANDER

R IVERHEAD B OOKS

a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

New York

2007

Picture 1
RIVERHEAD BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephens Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0745, Auckland, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices:
80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

Copyright 2007 by Shalom Auslander
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the authors rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
Published simultaneously in Canada

Grateful acknowledgment is made to The New Yorker, where portions of this book originally appeared, in slightly different form.

Photographs: Vincent Oliver/Getty Images; Nick Daly/Getty Images;
Holly Harris/Getty Images; Daly & Newton/Getty Images;
Mario Tama/Getty Images; Bert Loewenherz/Getty Images.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Auslander, Shalom.
Foreskins lament: a memoir / Shalom Auslander.
p. cm.
ISBN: 978-1-1012-1763-4
1. Auslander, ShalomChildhood and youth. 2. Authors, American21st centuryBiography. 3. JewsUnited StatesBiography. I. Title.
PS3601.U85Z46 2007 2007013955
813'.6dc22 [B]

Throughout this book, the names of some places as well as
individuals and their personal details have been changed.

While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

4. And the Lord said unto Moses,

This is the land I promised you,

but you shall not enter. Psych.

5. And Moses died.

D EUTERONOMY

Contents

W hen I was a child, my parents and teachers told me about a man who was very strong. They told me he could destroy the whole world. They told me he could lift mountains. They told me he could part the sea. It was important to keep the man happy. When we obeyed what the man had commanded, the man liked us. He liked us so much that he killed anyone who didnt like us. But when we didnt obey what he had commanded, he didnt like us. He hated us. Some days he hated us so much, he killed us; other days, he let other people kill us. We call these days holidays. On Purim, we remembered how the Persians tried to kill us. On Passover, we remembered how the Egyptians tried to kill us. On Chanukah, we remembered how the Greeks tried to kill us.

Blessed is He, we prayed.

As bad as these punishments could be, they were nothing compared to the punishments meted out to us by the man himself. Then there would be famines. Then there would be floods. Then there would be furious vengeance. Hitler might have killed the Jews, but this man drowned the world. This was the song we sang about him in kindergarten:

God is here,

God is there,

God is truly

everywhere!

Then snacks, and a fitful nap.

I was raised like a veal in the Orthodox Jewish town of Monsey, New York, where it was forbidden to eat veal together with dairy. Having eaten veal, one was forbidden to eat dairy for six hours; having eaten dairy, one was forbidden to eat veal for three hours. One was forbidden to eat pig forever, or at least until the Messiah arrived; it was then, Rabbi Napier had taught us in the fourth grade, that the wicked would be punished, the dead would be resurrected, and pigs would become kosher.

Yay! I said, high-fiving my best friend, Dov.

You should be so excited, said Rabbi Napier, peering with disgust over the top of his thick horn-rimmed glasses,on the Day of Gods Judgment.

The people of Monsey were terrified of God, and they taught me to be terrified of Him, toothey taught me about a woman named Sarah who would giggle, so He made her barren; about a man named Job who was sad and asked,Why?, so God came down to the Earth, grabbed Job by the collar, and howled,Who the fuck do you think you are?; about a man named Moses, who escaped from Egypt, and who roamed through the desert for forty years in search of a Promised Land, and whom God killed just before he reached itface-plant on the one-yard linebecause Moses had sinned, once, forty years earlier. His crime? Hitting a rock. And so, in early autumn, when the leaves choked, turned colors, and fell to their deaths, the people of Monsey gathered together in synagogues across the town and wondered, aloud and in unison, how God was going to kill them: Who will live and who will die, they prayed, who at his predestined time and who before his time, who by water and who by fire, who by sword, who by beast, who by famine, who by thirst, who by storm, who by plague, who by strangulation, and who by stoning.

Then lunch, and a fitful nap.

It is Monday morning, six weeks after my wife and I learned that she is pregnant with our first child, and I am stopped at a traffic light. The kid doesnt have a chance. Its a trick. I know this God; I know how He works. The baby will be miscarried, or die during childbirth, or my wife will die during childbirth, or theyll both die during childbirth, or neither of them will die and Ill think Im in the clear, and then on the drive home from the hospital, well collide head-on with a drunk driver and theyll both die later, my wife and child, in the emergency room just down the hall from the room where only minutes ago we stood so happy and alive and full of promise.

That would be so God.

The teachers from my youth are gone, the parents old and mostly estranged. The man they told me about, thoughhes still around. I cant shake him. I read Spinoza. I read Nietzsche. I read National Lampoon. Nothing helps. I live with Him every day, and behold, He is still angry, still vengeful, stilleternallypissed off.

Man plans, my parents said,and God laughs.

When you least expect it, my teachers warned,expect it.

And I do. All day long, a never-ending horror film festival plays in my mind, my own private Grand Guignol. There isnt an hour of the day that goes by without some gruesome, horrific imaginings of death, anguish, and torment. Walking down the street, shopping for groceries, filling the truck with gas; friends die, beloveds are murdered, pets are run over by delivery trucks and killed.

Up ahead, past the intersection where the road bends sharply to the right, cars slow, brake lights flashing as they disappear around the bend. An accident, I imagine, and I imagine driving by Shithead, I will criticize the driver, ought to know better than to speed around here when I recognize the car. It is a black Nissan. That looks like Orlis And then I see my wife behind the wheel, crushed, bloody, head back, tongue out. She is dead. I can bring myself to tears this way; if Im in a particularly self-loathing mood, I may, like a Reuters photographer, place a childs toy in her blood-soaked lap, or a colorfully gift-wrapped box on the dash above the very spot where her head had bashed it in.

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