Traditionally I am not one for books about/surrounding religion, however when the sisterhood at my synagogue started reading Lucette Lagnado’s The Arrogant Years, I couldn’t help but be intrigued. Mainly because Judiasm, and all the rituals/limitations that come with it in the 1950s, served as the backdrop for what is really a multicultural story about a young girl from Cairo who makes her way to New York. Throughout her life, she is forced to reconcile her Jewish heritage with the changing world view of the religion as well as feminism at its height in the 1960s and 70s.
Lagnado, aka Lou Lou, is the youngest in her family of Orthodox Jews. Add to that the fact that she’s a girl, and her early years are marked by separation and less rights as the men in her family as well as male peers. Beginning in Cairo, the Arrogant Years is a fascinating depiction of Orthodox life from the view of a girl bold enough to question “the way things are” and desperate to change them. At the same time, she is torn between the traditions that Jews pride themselves on and her desire to adapt to the changing face of women’s rights around the world.
As a Jew myself, though a reform one at that (i.e. not as conservative as the Orthodox), I found the book especially interesting insofar as I can relate to their traditions and the pride Lou Lou’s family had in their traditions. On the flip side, I learned a lot more about the history of a more conservative sect of Judaism. Being raised in a reform congregation, I was never subject to the separate of men and women or pressure to marry young that is illustrated here.
My only gripe about the book is this: while it is written in first person narrative,t he photo captions are all in third person! Small potatoes, I know, but I would have liked to see more consistency. It made me question whether the author threw in the photos out of a desire to bring her tales to life with a real face, or if the editors did it later to add more color.
