Naomi Ragen

Naomi Ragen is an American-Israeli author, playwright and women’s rights activist.

Ragen (née Terlinsky) was born in New York City on July 10, 1949 and received an Orthodox Jewish education before completing a degree in literature at Brooklyn College (1971), the same year she moved to Israel with her husband. In 1978 she received a master’s degree in literature from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Fiction

Ragen’s first three novels, which described the lives of ultra-Orthodox Jewish women in Israel and the United States, dealt with themes that had not previously been addressed in that society's literature: wife-abuse (Jephte’s Daughter: 1989), adultery (Sotah: 1992) and rape (The Sacrifice of Tamar: 1995). Reaction to these novels in the Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox communities was mixed. Some hailed her as a pioneer who for the first time exposed and opened to public discussion problems which the communities had preferred to pretend did not exist, while others criticized her for “hanging out the dirty laundry” for everyone to see, thus embarrassing the rabbis who were believed by many to be effectively dealing with these problems “behind the scenes” and also putting “ammunition in the hands of the anti-Semites”.

Her next novel (The Ghost of Hannah Mendes: 1998) told the story of a Sephardic family brought back from the abyss of assimilation by the spirit of their ancestor Gracia Mendes (a true historical figure), a 16th century Portuguese crypto-Jew who risked her life and her considerable fortune to practice her religion in secret.

Chains Around the Grass (2002) is a semi-autobiographical novel of the author’s childhood which dealt with the failure of the American dream for her parents.

In The Covenant (2004) Ragen dealt with the contemporary theme of an ordinary family sucked into the horror of Islamic terrorism.

The Saturday Wife (2007), the story of a rabbi's wayward wife, is loosely based on Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, and is a satire of modern Jewish Orthodoxy.

The Tenth Song (2010), is the story of a family whose life is shattered when a false accusation of terrorism is made against the father.

Drama

Women’s Minyan, Ragen’s 2001 play, tells the story of an ultra-Orthodox woman who, upon fleeing from her adulterous and abusive husband, finds that he has manipulated the rabbinical courts to deprive her of the right to see or speak to her twelve children. The story is based on a true incident.

Women’s Minyan ran for six years in Habima (Israel's National Theatre) and has been staged in the United States, Canada and Argentina.

Women's rights

Ragen has long been active in the Agunah struggle through attempting to force rabbinical courts to alter traditional divorce proceedings, and by trying to prevent men from using the granting of the "Get" as an instrument of extortion.

More recently (2006), Ragen joined several other women in petitioning the courts to force the Israeli government and public bus companies to discontinue gender separated bus lines, in which men and women sit apart.^[1] Ragen claims that she was once herself harassed after riding in the "wrong" section.^[1] The case has been slowly making its way through the court system.^[1] It should be noted that other Orthodox Jewish women are not necessarily opposed to these bus lines.^[2]

Miscellaneous

In 2007, two American-Israeli writers accused Ragen of plagiarizing their works. Ragen vehemently denies both accusations, attributing them to extortion and political agendas.^[3]

In 2010 a third American-Israeli writer, Sudi Rosengarten, filed suit against Ragen, claiming that Ragen's book The Sacrifice of Tamar which deals with a black child born to an ultra-Orthodox family as a result of a long-hidden rape of the grandmother, was based on her autobiographical short story "A Marriage Made in Heaven." Ragen has denied this allegation as well.

References

1. ^ ^{a b c} "Israel bus rule sparks religious row". One News (New Zealand). 2008-01-15. http://tvnz.co.nz/view/page/536641/1545926. Retrieved 2008-02-11. 
2. ^ http://wwrn.org/articles/24199/?&place=israel-palestine&section=judaism
3. ^ Dan Izenberg (2007-02-23). "Naomi Ragen denies plagiarism". Haaretz. http://fr.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1171894498711&pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull. Retrieved 2008-02-11. 

External links

• Naomi Ragen's website

Persondata
Name	Ragen, Naomi
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	1949
Place of birth
Date of death
Place of death