Showing results for "Shalom Auslander" in Biographies & Memoirs

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 14-mile hike to watch the New York Rangers play in Madison Square Garden without violating the Sabbath.

Hear writers Shalom Auslander and A. J. Jacobs on this edition of Fresh Air. Auslander is the author of the memoir Foreskin's Lament, about growing up in a strict, socially isolated Orthodox Jewish community and his attempt to break free of it. Tom Perrotta (author of Little Children) describes the book as a "scathing theological rant, a funny, oddly moving coming-of-age memoir."