Bylines and Blessings

March 15, 2024
Gruen reflects on the challenges of being a professional writer, especially as an Orthodox Jew inhabiting a largely secular, liberal profession. The author grew up a secular Jew in the San Fernando Valley, uninterested in connecting with Judaism in a profoundly spiritual way. Nevertheless, it deeply informed her sense of self, and much of her early writing--she was the editor-in-chief of a Jewish newspaper, Ha'Etgar, while attending UC Berkeley--was focused on specifically Jewish issues ("Judaism was my identity, emotionally and culturally"). Then she met Jeff, the man who would eventually become her husband; though he was also raised a secular Jew, he'd become intensely drawn to Orthodoxy. Initially both curious about and resistant to the possibility of following the path of an observant Jew, she eventually began to realize that the profound theological questions Jeff raised spoke to her deeply, particularly as a Jewish woman. This new identity wasn't easy to maintain in the world of professional writers, a milieu dominated by secular liberalism; with impressive candor and thoughtfulness, Gruen chronicles feeling like an outsider as a "Shabbat-observant Jewish woman who supported Israel" and a political conservative deeply troubled by both the global rise of antisemitism ("I used to wear my liberal identity as a badge of honor, a statement of my moral virtue and sophistication"). The author details her accomplished career as a writer, one that began modestly--her first real writing job was at a trade journal, Hospital Gift Shop Management--but flourished later on. She also laments the fashionable tendency of some to write "Orthodox-shaming" memoirs that present a "skewed, prejudiced, and condescending vision of Torah life." Gruen's remembrance revolves around two intersecting stories: her life as a writer and as a conservative Jew among secular liberals. The latter narrative is the more absorbing one; she limns her spiritual and political metamorphosis with impressive nuance, and without any strident grandstanding. As she observes, Judaism extols the "value of discretion," emphasizing painstaking care with public communication, a virtue she admirably displays throughout her recollection. But one can't help but question whether Gruen's writing and editing career, while not without its laudable accomplishments, is really the stuff of which compelling memoirs are made. Additionally, her account of writing itself often seems rehearsed, the stale presentation of a conventional piety rendered in equally conventional language: "I believed that a good writer nurtures her love and respect for the written word and understands the ingredients of prose that flows logically and at times, lyrically. A good writer is committed to the practice of writing as an art and a craft." For a writer who insists on the meticulous choice of the most precise word, it's disappointing when she refers to her "achy-breaky heart" while discussing a romantic disappointment, or calls a difficult colleague the "Mean Girl editor." Nevertheless, Gruen's memoir is both insightful and courageous, and well worth reading for anyone, writer or not, interested in the trials of navigating a politically and religiously inhospitable environment. A perceptive memoir, written with both boldness and restraint.

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