Descriere & specificații

n As the fourth daughter of a prominent Orthodox Jewish family in New York, I was expected to attend a religious seminary for girls, date the suitors my father arranged, become engaged by 19, marry within six weeks, and have as many children as I could bear, raising my family in a house of Godly belief. No one guessed that at 19, I was spellbound, in forbidden love with a man 18 years my senior. I finally ran away with him. I had never held a boy's hand, much less made love to a man; I had never been dancing, eaten a meal at a non-Kosher restaurant or been close to a non-Jewish friend. This rhapsodic feeling of freedom, the sensual pleasure and the decadence of newfound independence came at the price of almost unbearable heartbreak. In marrying the man I loved, I was considered a traitor, abandoning centuries of tradition and rabbinic law. My runaway marriage in Reno began a mythic journey to what Hegel and Kierkegaard would call true selfhood. n Set during the Vietnam era through present day and relatable across religious, cultural and ethnic backgrounds, When Your Family Says No is a memoir about choice, the complexity of family love, and how desire does not stop because of the confines of rigid rabbinical rules. My marriage was not a protest or rebellion against my family or my Orthodoxy. I didn't plan on falling in love; it simply happened. I wanted to be with the man I loved and also stay within the confines of my family. But behind the lush lawns and beautiful brick fac