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Foreskin's Lament: A Memoir | 
 enlarge | Author: Shalom Auslander
Publisher: Riverhead Hardcover
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
Buy New: $6.49
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Avg. Customer Rating:  53 reviews
Sales Rank: 56093
Format: Bargain Price
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 320
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.5 x 1.1
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.6
ASIN: B001C2E3NU
Publication Date: October 4, 2007
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Product Description
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 his way to a life where he didn't struggle against God daily.
Foreskin's Lament reveals Auslander's youth in a strict, socially isolated Orthodox community, and recounts his rebellion and efforts to make a new life apart from it. Auslander remembers his youthful attempt to win the "blessing bee" (the Orthodox version of a spelling bee), his exile to an Orthodox-style reform school in Israel after he's caught shoplifting Union Bay jeans from the mall, and his fourteen mile hike to watch the New York Rangers play in Madison Square Garden without violating the Sabbath. Throughout, Auslander struggles to understand God and His complicated, often contradictory laws. He tries to negotiate with God and His representatives-a day of sin-free living for a day of indulgence, a blessing for each profanity. But ultimately, Shalom settles for a peaceful cease-fire, a standoff with God, and accepts the very slim remaining hope that his newborn son might live free of guilt, doubt, and struggle.
Auslander's combination of unrelenting humor and anger--one that draws comparisons to memoirists David Sedaris and Dave Eggers--renders a rich and fascinating portrait of a man grappling with his faith, family, and community.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 48 more reviews...
 Uproariously funny ~ but there is a leason to be learned here December 26, 2008
Shalom Auslander looks back at his childhood and his teens, his rigid upbringing as an Orthodox Jew, while in the present he is awaiting the birth of his first child; he strings to two side by side until he brings us up to date. It is an account written with economy, openly and frankly, he does not shy back from saying what thinks, and the butt of most of his criticism is the Creator, followed by his (hypocritical) parents.
Shalom Auslander's memoir is very funny, irreverent to the extreme, but also perhaps very sad. He seems to land on his feet eventually, but not without a great deal of heartache and loss along the way. He sees his Creator as a vengeful, spiteful entity who repays his sins with potential calamities, and much of the humour here is derived from his attempts at bargaining in connection with this, and it is very funny. But one cannot but think how unfortunate he has been with his upbringing; not only living with the hypocrisy, but bound to a set of beliefs so petty as to consider sitting on the grass on the Sabbath a sin as it might constitute printing should any stain from the grass transfer to one's clothes (the Creator, if one believes in such, has to be more than that surely?) That is just one of the numerous possible sins Auslander cites in his memoir. But sadly his Yeshiva education seems to have ignored the Creator's cardinal quality, Love. But that seems hardly surprising as it failed in other areas too: Moses' sin was not in striking the rock to draw water as he repeatedly says and was presumably taught, but a quite different failure in connection with that act (Numbers chp 20 vs 12); a failure from which one could possibly learn. Interestingly the one period when Auslander is truly happy in his youth is when while in Israel he is treated with genuine love.
I can imagine many will be shocked by Auslander's memoir, the language alone might well cause upset, but if that does not the profanity almost certainly for some will; I have to admit that I cringed more than a few times. But I would urge all to read it, not because it is uproariously funny, which it is, but because there is a significant lesson to be learned here whatever one's beliefs.
Readers lament... December 12, 2008
Very few books can make me laugh out loud; this is one of them. Auslander manages to ridicule almost every aspect of Jewish rituals and observances while still maintaining the fear of G-d. The reader travels with the author through time as he encounters all sorts of personal challenges. Overbearing parents and teachers, conflicts with pornography, relationships, and finally, the pressure to circumsise his new born son. I thorougly enjoyed this book and I recommend it to everyone.
 MORE A LONG ARTICLE THAN A BOOK November 18, 2008
Yes, this book was mildly amusing. But I bought it expecting much more. I expected an insightful look into the ultra-Orthodox community and into the author and his family. What I got was no more than a long newspaper article with a few laughs. Or maybe an outline for a longer, truer look into the author's life. So many questions were left unanswered. Why did the author's father "hate them all." What was his relationship with his brother and sister (who remain nameless)? Why, really, did he suddenly become religious in Israel? I could go on and on. In short, I was amused but disappoined. Next time I'd like a real look into Mr. Auslander's life and soul. Unless this is the way he chooses to to present himself, it's much more like an idea for a book than a real one.
interesting September 6, 2008
I found this book very interesting. I think the questions the author asks are important--especially in regard to the unquestioned fantasies so many people hold of a tyrannical father-god. I'm sorry to read other reviews in which the author is so severely castigated, simply for expressing his own experience and view.
Foreskins Lament, or The yeshiva bucher who strayed August 15, 2008
you know those moments in life that are frustratingly awful but then you can laugh when you look back on them? This is Foreskins Lament. Auslander has the ability to look back and see the humour and how great to share it with us.
The curcumcision Dillema is at the beginging and end of this book, and I feel it is more of a construct to make the book into a package and not the heart and story of the book.
I do not know how it is interpreted by those who are far from this story in real life. For me, having gone to a yeshiva, I really sympathized and related and laughed out loud.
I would love to see or hear Ausalnder on a panel togheter with the author of Living the Bible. What a panel that would be!
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