His entry begins:
Recently, I was devastated by Shulem Deen’s memoir All Who Go Do Not Return. He was raised as a Chasidic Jew in New York, with no real English education or understanding of the secular world outside his front door. As a teenager, he moves to New Square, New York and becomes a Skverer Chasid, one of the strictest sects within Chasidic Judaism. He marries, has children and immerses himself in the extreme religious beliefs of him community — at one point even trashing the dorm room of a fellow Chasid upon suspicion that he was keeping an inappropriate photograph. But when he starts questioning his way of life and stops believing in God, his community...[read on]About High Holiday Porn, from the publisher:
Eytan Bayme went to Jewish day school and Jewish camp. He lived across the street from a synagogue in the Bronx, which he attended weekly, and ate strictly kosher food for most of his childhood. Yet even at the age of six, he wanted to know what the deal was with those Pizza Huts and Burger Kings that he wasn't allowed into "God wouldn't put them on earth if He didn't mean for us to try them," he thought. Wasn't that obvious? Also, why can't he stop thinking about his female classmates in bed, late atVisit Eytan Bayme's website.night, with his little brother not five feet away; and how come the starting line-up for the 1986 Mets keep creeping into those fantasies? Religious life is difficult enough without the urges of a typical adolescent boy, yet Eytan's urges develop well before his teens, and they just keep on developing and developing.
High Holiday Porn is a heartwarming and hilarious story about learning to become an adult. It chronicles how an anxious boy finally stops masturbating in public, gets the girl, grows up, and begrudgingly makes peace with the unfairness of life and love. It's a funny, fantasy-laden, usually embarrassing, sometimes raunchy and always outrageous look at coming of age that will resonate with anyone who ever felt awkward growing up.
My Book, The Movie: High Holiday Porn.
Writers Read: Eytan Bayme.
--Marshal Zeringue
Posts
