"I thank you for making us proud, you ungrateful child. Now put on a fraileche punim and enjoy your party."
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The Orthodoxy of Arrogance by M.B. Moshe Trafford Publishing
book review by Jana McBurney-Lin
The Orthodoxy of Arrogance has three main characters—Moritz, his wife Hannah, and their only child, an androgynous-looking, spoiled, seventeen-year-old girl named Yeshiva. The story begins with the family moving to Cleveland and Yeshiva fretting over her bat mitzvah. It is three years past due. Is that too late? Will her orthodox mother allow her to play Abba? Will she meet a young man? Moshe's story comes in patches. His lovely descriptions—and there are many fun references to the seventies—are interspersed with bits of dialogue, and then he jumps to another time and location. During one patch we learn that Moritz and Hannah narrowly escaped Germany in 1944. During another we learn that Moritz forged his own graduation certificate from Divinity school and became a rabbi. During another, we learn that Moritz and Hannah were both orphaned as children. One often wishes that, instead of flitting over this rich land like a butterfly, we could rest a while and absorb more of the story.
As for spoiled Yeshiva, she gets to dance to Abba at her bat mitzvah, finds herself a "good" man, and then decides to leave him and live instead with a woman. And life goes on. In fact, that is what comes through most clear. Evil, unfortunate, and unexpected things occur, yet life goes on. So enjoy the party. The story is sprinkled heavily with Hebrew, German, and Yiddish, and the glossary at the back is useful for translation.