Episode 27: Esther Levy Chehebar
On Marriage, Sisterhood, and the Weight of Tradition
Esther Levy Chehebar’s Five Books:
The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
Beware of God by Shalom Auslander
Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
No Fault by Haley Mlotek
Sisters of Fortune by Esther Levy Chehebar
The Five Books is a podcast that celebrates the role of books in Jewish culture. Through author interviews, we delve into Jewish identity and discover each author’s favorite novels. Join us every week for new Jewish book recommendations! Some of our episodes have included conversations with Rabbi Sharon Brous (Senior Rabbi at IKAR, and author of The Amen Effect), Yael Van Der Wouden (author of The Safekeep), and Dara Horn (author of People Love Dead Jews.)
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Hosted by Tali Rosenblatt Cohen
Produced by Odelia Rubin
Editorial and website support by Sarah Waring
Artwork by Dena Friedman
Music by Dov Rosenblatt and Blue Dot Sessions.
The Cohen sisters are at a crossroads. And not just because the obedient middle sister, Fortune, has secretly started to question her engagement and impending wedding. Nina, the rebellious eldest sister, is single at 26 (and growing cobwebs by her community's standards) when she runs into an old friend who offers her a chance to choose a different path. Meanwhile, Lucy, the youngest, a senior in high school, has started sneaking around with a charming older bachelor.
As Fortune inches ever closer to the chuppah, the sisters find themselves in a tug of war between tradition and modernity, reckoning with what their tight-knit community wants—and with what they want for themselves.
Esther Chehebar is a contributing writer at Tablet magazine, where she covers Sephardic Jewish tradition and community. She holds an MFA from the New School and has had her work featured in Glamour and Man Repeller. Chehebar’s first book, I Share My Name, was an illustrated children’s book explaining the Sephardic tradition of naming children for their grandparents. This is her debut novel.
In our conversation, we spoke about the culture of hospitality in Brooklyn’s Syrian Jewish community, the assumptions people make about such a close-knit group, and the inherent tension between tradition and individuality.
Other Books & Authors Mentioned:
The Marriage Box by Corie Adjmi
Transcript:
Tali Rosenblatt Cohen:
Welcome to The Five Books, where each week we talk with a Jewish author about five books that are near and dear to them. My name is Tali Rosenblatt Cohen, and today I'll be talking with Esther Chehebar about her novel Sisters of Fortune, which explores marriage and sisterhood in the Syrian Jewish community.
Esther Levy Chehebar:
I am fascinated, intrigued, and also in love with the idea of sisterhood. We sometimes, we measure ourselves against our sisters for better or for worse. It informs who we are and who we'll become. And I think that's an extremely powerful thing.
Esther Chehebar is a contributing writer at Tablet Magazine where she covers Sephardic Jewish tradition and community and a member of the Sephardic B'chor Cholim, a non-profit supporting the growing Syrian Jewish community in Brooklyn. She holds an MFA from the New School and has had her work featured in Glamour and Man Repeller. Chehebar's first book, I Share My Name, was an illustrated children's book explaining the Sephardic tradition of naming children for their grandparents. This is her debut novel.
In this episode, we'll talk about the way the Syrian Jewish experience lives just under the surface of its American incarnation.
Esther Levy Chehebar:
One of the unique elements of the community is that a lot of our generation, we don't actually know the details of our past and of the generation before us and the persecution they faced. I think that we're a very forward thinking community and we were so focused on building a life in Brooklyn. You know, it's incredible. But I didn't really know much about my grandparents' actual immigrant story.
And we'll hear more about the warmth and exuberance of a close-knit traditional community.
Shabbat dinners were always very lively and flavorful and any typical Friday night could be 20 people sitting around a table, which I realize probably sounds insane, but it's like Thanksgiving every single Friday.
All that and more coming up next.
Welcome to the Five Books, Esther. I'm really excited to talk about Sisters of Fortune. I think what I loved about it is that to me it felt like Fiddler on the Roof meets Jane Austen. It was like rooted in tradition, so rich with sharp social insight, completely fresh and contemporary. You take an age old story of marrying off three daughters and you give it a modern twist.
I loved your description of the women of this multigenerational family as “a matryoshka doll of loyalty and blood and gel polish.” And more broadly, you give readers rare access to the full texture of the Syrian Jewish community, one that many of us on the outside really rarely gets a glimpse. So can you tell us a little bit about Sisters of Fortune and what compelled you to tell this story?
Esther Levy Chehebar:
Sure. Well, first of all, thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here. Like the three protagonists in the book, I grew up in the Syrian Jewish community in Brooklyn. It's a community that is rich with tradition and its own set of cultural values and taboos that may seem strange to a lot of outsiders, but that are completely seeped into the fabric of the community where we live, their traditions that our ancestors and the older generations have carried with them from Aleppo and Damascus and the broader Sephardic community where I live, people are from Egypt and Lebanon. So to me, it was always normal and it wasn't until, really this sounds crazy, but it wasn't until I went to college not too far from home to NYU that I gained a new level of appreciation, I think, for many of these traditions that I maybe rebelled against a little bit growing up. I am one of three sisters and I have a brother. I think that obviously dating and marriage and family are huge elements of the community and where we come from and they have great importance. Things like reputation and legacy. I just, I don't know, I really wanted to try and capture that as best as I could and sisterhood really above all.
And can you just give us like a quick synopsis of Sisters of Fortune?
Esther Levy Chehebar:
Sure. So Sisters of Fortune follows three sisters, Nina, Fortune and Lucy. The book alternates between each of their perspectives. Nina is the oldest. She's single. She's kind of figuring out who she is and where she wants to be. She's a little bit angsty, doesn't quite feel like she fits in both with her family and her community. And so we sort of get to follow her on her own journey. Fortune is the middle child. She's engaged to be married. There's a level of ambivalence about her. She seems to be following the traditional path of women in the community and women around her. And then there's Lucy, who is the baby of the family. She's a high school senior. And she is dating an older, very eligible bachelor. All the sisters are very different.
And you know, they bicker of course, but there is like a deep sense of love and respect and connection among them. I think the book is about the matriarchy in all of its forms, I hope. You know, they live with their parents and their grandmother who immigrated from Aleppo in the early 90s. And it's very much a book about the tug of war between tradition and modernity and where this community falls.
Book One: a Jewish book from childhood — The Diary of Anne Frank.
First, if you could tell me a little bit, what was your household like Jewishly growing up and what did a typical Shabbat or holiday look like in your family?
Esther Levy Chehebar:
Sure. So we grew up Orthodox. I went to yeshiva growing up and we celebrated every Shabbat. My mother would cook. Most Shabbats growing up we spent with all of my cousins or, you know, we alternated between my mom's side and my dad's side. So I lived mere blocks away from my cousins. I actually grew up with my, living with my maternal grandparents, you know, until I was 16 and we moved into our own house, but Shabbat dinners were always very lively and flavorful and you know people I meet outside of the community now are like wait what do you mean? Now when I cook for my own family any typical Friday night could be 20 people sitting around the table which I realize probably sounds insane but it's like Thanksgiving every single Friday. Food was a huge and is a huge part of our family.
And the book.
And the book. We grew up tasting, trading recipes. It really is, it's almost like its own religion and definitely something that I appreciate more now. You know, having my own family and having my own kids and cooking the same dishes that my grandmother cooks for us and that my mother still cooks for us and looking at their stained recipe cards and the tattered cookbooks.
You mentioned the grandmother character Sito in the book that she fled Aleppo in the 90s. I'm wondering about the kinds of stories that you grew up hearing and your family's story.
Esther Levy Chehebar:
So it's funny, one of my grandfathers is from Aleppo, my maternal grandfather and my paternal grandfather was born and raised in Cairo. Sadly, we never really spoke about his story growing up. My grandpa Maurice was a very funny, lively, energetic, charming, at times inappropriate personality and you know. It's one of my biggest regrets that I never actually sat down with him, he passed away and I never actually sat down with him and got his story. I mean, we've heard it in bits and pieces from my parents, but I think that a unique, one of the unique elements of the community is that a lot of our generation, we don't actually know or we don't speak about the details of our past and of the generation before us and the persecution they faced. I think that we're a very forward-thinking community and we were so focused on building a life in Brooklyn and creating all of the amazing institutions that the generation before me have created and built and it's incredible, the shuls and the schools and the nonprofits and you know it's incredible but I didn't really know much about my grandparents actual immigrant story and why they came here. I think that now there's much more of a focus in our yeshiva to educate our children about our grandparents history and, but I do know obviously that both of my grandparents faced a lot of persecution and were forced to flee but before that happened growing up, you know my grandpa Maurice, he spoke about a joyous life that he had in Egypt, the food and the culture and the music, all of it.
And I imagine they were forced to flee in like the late 40s or post creation of Israel.
Yeah.
Yes. I also am just curious some of the books and writers that you loved as a kid and did you have any particular role models?
Esther Levy Chehebar:
As a kid, I remember reading a ton of Judy Blume. I just remember grabbing every single Judy Blume title I could get my hands on. My dad kept all of his books in his closet. And I just remember as a kid going in there, and he had a ton of books that I read but did not understand. A lot of Umberto Eco, which sounds very bizarre, but he also had a lot of Jewish writers that I've reread since, and Nathan Englander and Gary Shteyngart. And I loved reading David Sedaris growing up, the way he depicts family in all of its lunacy and humor and heart I've always related to and connected with. I loved Jane Austen. I even loved Shakespeare, reading Shakespeare in high school. The universality of literature old and new is just, it was always comforting to me growing up.
It's interesting because so many, there have been a bunch of books about the Sephardi, Mizrahi American experience. A lot of them look backwards and like look at their experience in these various countries about fleeing. Are there others that are missing that are set in contemporary American Jewish Syrian Brooklyn?
Well, Corie Adjmi, who is a close friend and a member of my community and a great writer, she wrote a novel called The Marriage Box, which alternates between two perspectives, a young woman growing up in the 80s, New Orleans, who moves to the community in the 80s, which is a great book and everyone should check it out. But as far as I know, no, there are no other contemporary.
Yeah. So it's pretty amazing to like be giving everybody this window into your own community and to be doing it in such a fresh, fun way. It was just a really, a pleasure to read. So I'm excited for you. I asked you a book that, you know, sort of expressed your Jewish identity as a kid and you picked the diary of Anne Frank. So tell me why you picked it and when you read it.
Esther Levy Chehebar:
I read the diary of Anne Frank probably around the same age as Anne Frank when she began her diary, so probably around 13, I want to say. Obviously with a profound sadness and, you know, in knowing what transpired, but I think the feeling of hopefulness and light and innocence in many ways and hearing and reading about Anne's experience in truly the deepest depths of despair. At times the normalcy with which she approached her situation, her falling in love and bickering with her mother and her relationship with her sister and you know at the same time this backdrop of terror. I think something always struck me about it and I wanted to be a writer and I'm reading about it. It just seems so much bigger than me.
How did being of Mizrahi heritage shape how you connected to the story and to the Holocaust in general?
I grew up going to yeshiva. The Holocaust was a huge part of my yeshiva education. I didn't even know anybody who had grandparents who were survivors or killed. So it did seem distant from my own experience and from the experience of my community. And I think that I did always feel connected in the responsibility to learn about it and carry it with me and to never forget as the saying goes.
Book Two: a Jewish book from adulthood — Beware of God by Shalom Auslander.
Esther Levy Chehebar:
Okay, so I don't know if I would say it expresses my Jewish identity.
Okay.
Just to be fair. It definitely tickled my imagination and made me think and tapped into a lot of doubt I think I had growing up, to be completely honest and fair. The book is a collection of short stories that deal with the ambiguity and the complexities of faith.
When I first picked it up, I actually read his memoir first, which is called The Foreskin’s Lament. I've never read anything like it before. It was outrageous and inappropriate and it made me blush. And I kept on wanting to put it down because I was like, I shouldn't be reading this. And I think I felt similarly when I read Beware of God, but it was a voice that, I almost became addicted to the voice. I think he, you know, has a way of expressing the absurdity of religion. He has a lot of chutzpah for sure. But I do think, you know, and I don't know if he'd say this and I don't want to put, certainly don't want to put words in Shalom Auslander's mouth, but I didn't find it anti-religion at all. I felt like it was very much in the Jewish tradition of questioning things and wanting to know why and unveiling hypocrisy without completely rejecting the idea of religion. And I think that growing up, I did have questions and these questions don't always have answers. And I think reading some of these stories, which are hilarious if I hadn't mentioned and dark and unexpected, I think they helped me reckon with some of the questions that I had growing up.
I was also wondering if just that very provocative tone kind of gave you permission to write about your own community in some way.
Esther Levy Chehebar:
Yeah, I think that I've always been drawn to provocative Jewish authors in general, Philip Roth being one of them, who is a frequent mention on this podcast, I know, and it's not surprising. I think that if I always thought to myself, if I was going to write this book or when I wrote this book, I wanted to follow in the tradition of provocative Jewish writers and I didn't want to shy away from that.
And along with that, do you feel a sense of responsibility when writing about your community?
Esther Levy Chehebar:
Of course. I feel an immense amount of responsibility and pressure and I think that's because, you know, a lot of books that have been written about Orthodox communities come from the perspective of someone who left, someone who is off the derech, O-T-D, I think is the acronym that people use. I'm not that person. I am very much seeped into my community still. My kids go to the yeshivat. I love my community. I really wanted to put out something that was joyful in its Jewishness because that's been my experience of being Jewish and I think that the community I write about is a joyful one and we spend so much time together at events, at weddings, at bar mitzvahs, at brit milahs, just gathered around the table at our Thanksgiving Shabbat dinners, bonding over food and tradition and a shared history and a shared language. And that's first and foremost what I wanted to share and communicate.
Book Three: a book that changed your worldview — Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami.
Esther Levy Chehebar:
So Norwegian Wood by Hiroki Murakami was a book that I read in college. It takes place in the 1960s in Tokyo, Japan. It was unlike anything I've ever read before. I think that it left me with a profound sense of sorrow and I don't mean that in a bad way. I mean, first of all, Japanese culture is completely different than the culture that I grew up in. You know, in this book, in the way that emotions are dealt with and in the way that sex is written and in the way that, you know, there's suicide and mental illness. It's very quiet. It's very heavy. It's masterful. But I almost felt like a voyeur reading it. And I remember feeling like it unlocked something within me and I remember feeling profoundly and deeply unsettled to the point where I didn't know if I wanted to finish it but I was obsessively thinking about it and these characters when I wasn't reading it.
What was the unsettling part?
I think how isolated the characters felt. I think the level of, like, loneliness and rumination. I grew up in a very loud, boisterous family. One that left little time to really sit with some of these very universal but very unsettling emotions and not knowing sometimes why you feel sadness.
You're talking about it in terms of like access to these emotions which maybe were not part of your everyday. When you told me that this was one of your picks I was thinking along the lines of like the emotional searching that comes in young adulthood and that's obviously the time period that you explore in Sisters of Fortune.
Right. The coming of age elements.
Yeah, so I was kind of just wondering if that time period, like what about that time period is so compelling to you?
Esther Levy Chehebar:
Everything. I think that obviously what's so special about young adulthood is that you're given permission to figure it out, you're given permission to be confused. It's part of it. I think that I'm still confused as a 33-year-old. I think I'm still figuring it out, but I think that young adulthood is this very precious, amorphous, weird time where you are not expected to know anything. I think that in my book and what I struggled with is that the young adulthood timeline is compressed. You know, I myself, I met my now husband, I was 19 or 18. I was a freshman in college, which is a time when most people are not meeting their future husbands. They're not getting married at 21. So that timeline is compressed. You're almost forced to figure it out on an expedited timeline. And so I was always really interested in what that does to a person. You know, does everyone feel this way? Does everyone feel rushed? Are people confused? You know, sometimes it felt like am I the only one that's questioning things? And obviously these themes are themes that are explored in Norwegian Wood set against the backdrop of the 1960s and all of the cultural tumult that was happening in that time. And so I love reading coming of age stories because it reminds me that I'm not alone in that isolation and you know, these are universally felt feelings.
Book Four: The book you're reading now — No Fault by Hayley Mlotek.
Esther Levy Chehebar:
It is classified as a memoir, but it's super interesting. It dives into the history and tradition of marriage and its place in our culture. You know, the history of marriage and what it was and how it's come to be this romantic ideal that it is today, because it of course wasn't always. And I find it fascinating.
Book Five: the author’s latest book — Sisters of Fortune by Esther Chehebar.
I love these sisters. You pull at the stereotypes of the Syrian Jewish community, especially around gender roles and wealth and conformity. How would you describe what the dominant perceptions are and what kind of nuance were you hoping to bring to those?
Esther Levy Chehebar:
I think from the outside looking in, the Syrian community looks like a very glamorous, insular community, both of which we are. And I think that because there is so little written and shown about the community, it's very easy to fall into stereotypical, judgmental territory, which I don't fault people for. I think that anytime you have a sort of secretive or insular community, there's a predisposition to not judge but to assume. And I think that amongst the female population of the community specifically, there might be an inclination to say, oh, well, they're all these really pretty, well-kept girls and they get married young and… that's it. And to be honest, that's a judgment that I've heard a lot from people outside of my community. And the Syrian Jewish women of my community are some of the most capable, smart, shrewd, loving, exacting people that I've ever met. I think they're all CEOs in and of themselves.
It's a standard that I was worried I could not live up to, to be completely honest, growing up, because they do make it look effortless. And I really wanted to capture and to show people, I think, just the level of care and thought that goes into running a home. It's truly amazing, because it's not just that there's food in the freezer to outlast the apocalypse, which there is. It's the level of warmth that is also infused in the home and the emphasis on family and our children. And I think I use the word in the book, saffeh, which is the Syrian word that we use to describe hospitality, “she has such saffeh,” like she just, her home is like infused with this warmth in the Syrian tradition. And that's the way our grandparents were in Aleppo as well. And we've brought that here. And if you walk up and down Ocean Parkway and people are, it's warm out and people are sitting outside and having coffee, you will be invited onto the porch and the display will look amazing and will be delicious and is homemade and that's to me what the Syrian community is.
I love that. I loved all of the words and language that you know some of which I've heard some of which I hadn't, and trying to pick those up. Let's talk about food because food is major in the book and you cannot read it on an empty stomach because you very hungry But Sito, and I forget the mother's name.
Sally.
Sally, she's like only their mother, you know referred to as their mother, they have a catering business and they, I thought it was so interesting that they're cooking mostly for other people's Shabbat tables. They're not really cooking, like, catering parties or anything. It's like filling in what these other modern women aren't doing necessarily themselves. Tell me more about what that was about.
Esther Levy Chehebar:
Okay, so a lot of the recipes and the food that we cook are traditional recipes. And in Syria, the tomato paste that we were using in the blahat was from the tomatoes that were being dried on the rooftop. And all of the hashu and the mahshi and all of the other food that's mentioned was all made by hand. And growing up, my grandmother, I would literally see her hollowing out the squash and the carrots and the onions to be stuffed with the meat and the rice. And all that manual labor was done by hand. And, you know, like anything else, modernization makes us lazy. Not lazy by anybody else's standards, I don't think, but maybe by our own community standards. I'm not hollowing out squash for my own family. I'll just be completely honest. I'm buying it prepped from the butcher, from the Syrian butcher down the block from me. So, you know, that has raised some animus, I think, that there's like the traditionalists who are like, it doesn't taste as good and, you know, everything has to be done by hand. But then there's, you know, we are modernizing and we are, we have our hands full and I always thought that was really funny, that disconnect between the older generation and the new, like you know, mom's my age and there are people my age who do everything by hand. There are tons of community chefs who are caterers and who service the community and I think it's just a luxury to be honest and I think it's just — it sort of evolved. These women are making the food in their homes just like they would for their family. They're just making more of it. And the community's buying it. And we have our own self-sufficient little economy going on where things are sold out of kitchens and basements and backyards. And it's really cool.
It is really cool. I also wanted to talk about wealth and I thought you did such a nuanced job kind of exploring where that materialism comes from, especially in a post-immigrant context and families who are seeking stability and identity. There's the swanee, is that how you pronounce it?
Swanee.
Swanee. Where the bride and groom's families present presents, gifts to each other. And Marie, who's Fortune’s mother-in-law to be, says “don't believe a woman who tells you she doesn't need things. We are all materialistic at our core. No shame in that.” So how do you see that pursuit of material comfort functioning in the Syrian Jewish community and what were you trying to say about it through your characters?
Esther Levy Chehebar:
Me and all of my friends and pretty much every Syrian girl I knew growing up wearing gold bangles. I used to play on the volleyball team in high school and we used to play against the Ashkenaz schools, you know, in the five towns and they used to joke that we all used to like tear off our bangles before the game and they could hear us coming because the bangles would jingle and I didn't know but I was told that the historical significance of the bangles was because when the women got married in Syria, a lot of them were gifted gold by their parents because, you know, gold always had value and they wanted the women to have something of their own, you know. So it gave them a sense of autonomy. And it's always been interesting to me seeing how the traditions are passed down and the meaning is sort of changed.
With the swanee, for example, the traditional idea of it was very much the same as the bangles. You're giving something to the woman, to the bride, so that she could have something of her own. She has her own sense of financial worth. And it's sort of, as traditions do, morphed and obviously grew to this very elaborate party. In some cases, it's not elaborate. In some cases, it's a private dinner, Shabbat dinner between two families, or maybe there's one gift given a week, and it's done differently in every situation. Not all swanees are these big elaborate affairs. But what started as this sentimental act of gifting the bride something so that she could have something of her own turned into this much more materialistic affair. And to be completely honest, there's a lot of pressure that comes with that. And there is societal pressure to be able to keep up with that. And I know that even when I was getting married, the tradition changed so that the bride also gives the groom presents.
When I was getting married I was gifting my husband a snowboard and golf clubs, a Tawleh backgammon set, and whatever else he was interested in at the time. But there was a sense of pressure, like, you know, making the wedding and buying the gifts. And I remember thinking, like, you know, obviously we didn't have to do it, but like so many traditions, you don't have to do it, but you do it because it's what you do. And I really wanted to capture that tug of war.
In so many different places you get at the different tensions between cultural expectations or tradition and modernity. Even Fortune is engaged to Saul and their story is one about a match that makes perfect sense on paper. He's kind and successful, he's part of the community and she's grappling with the absence of the feelings that she feels like she's supposed to have. There again, there's that tension between her emotional truth and the cultural expectation. And that tension between tradition and independence. Is that a tension that you've experienced or what was it about that particular tension there that also felt compelling to you?
Esther Levy Chehebar:
It's definitely something that I've experienced. It's something that I still experience. It's something that I know many people and many women have experienced, whether that's in private or public. I think that it's very important to talk about these emotions and grapple with these emotions out loud.
I think that something that I've always found interesting was the line between the private and the public. There was so much unsaid growing up, and at the same time, you know, sort of the contradictory force to that was, I mean, I grew up in a very, like I said, loud and outspoken, boisterous family where so much was said and was spoken about. And the family dynamics were very, you know, everything was on the table. But a lot of, you know, my personal thoughts on individualism versus community, traditionalism versus modernism, those are not things that I grew up speaking about. The community has gotten much more open and it was important for me to have this nuanced view on paper, almost as sort of like a living document in seeing the shift and seeing how that happened and how we became more open and how, on a more individual level, these three sisters became more open about their own stories and their own struggles because I think it starts off very internal and then you know, along each of their individual arcs, their struggles become more public. And I think in many ways that is emblematic of the community. I think the evolving of that has been to become more accepting and open, but most importantly in doing that to not abandon the traditions and some of the things that have held our community together because it is incredible that the community is still together and is so close and is so tight-knit, especially when a lot of other Jewish communities are fracturing.
Yeah, and marriage is so much a part of that. And there's, three stories of the three sisters are so different. Lucy's story probably feels like a familiar story for maybe people looking from the outside in. She starts dating someone when she's in high school. She's 18. She's dating a 30-year-old doctor, and it's seen as like the pinnacle of success. She's like what everyone aspires to. And interestingly, you suggest some cracks in that relationship and that there is like an element of marrying for social status. But you really resist a black and white judgment of her and suggest that like that's a valid choice in and of itself.
Esther Levy Chehebar:
Yeah, it's wild because, and this is probably gonna sound crazy, a lot of the comments from people who have read early copies who are outside of the community have been like, this is, how do we just gloss over this huge age gap? Like this is crazy, he's 30 and she's 18, and I mean obviously I wrote it and it was a huge part of the book. So I know that it's part of it is outrageous, but this is somewhat normalized in the community and I don't mean that in a negative way. I mean that in this was a love marriage. This wasn't an arranged marriage. It was a consenting marriage. And a lot of times that's just the way it happens. And that's not to say that I resisted to protect this idea of age gaps in marriage or young marriage. It's not. It's just when I say that this is just the way it is sometimes, that's just the way it is sometimes. And I don't mean for that to sound like a cop-out. It's just the truth. And I think that Lucy was such an interesting character to write because she had this level of naivete that I think I was almost jealous of.
She was the youngest, but she had this air of confidence. And maybe that's because she didn't have a lot of lived experience, but that worked for her at the time. And I think, as in so many cases, the cracks in the veneer happen as you get older, whether you're in a committed relationship or not. The cracks happen in seeing your friends go down different paths or your sisters do things differently and the cracks happen when you compare yourself and when the hoopla and the attention of getting married and you know all of the excitement that comes with that fades and you're reckoning with this is just me and my relationship. So I think that her journey was different in that she didn't have that ambivalence that maybe Fortune had and she didn't have those questions but that doesn't mean that those questions don't get you sooner or later.
You organize the chapters around a description of kallah classes, preparing brides for tahrari mishpocha, which is the laws of family purity, which are often considered private and taboo. Why did you use those to organize the chapters?
Esther Levy Chehebar:
Because someone told me not to. No, I’m kidding. I think it was a very interesting framework for me personally in my view of marriage. I took these kallah classes myself. For many women, I think it is the introduction to sex and intimacy. Sex and intimacy is not something that's spoken about freely and la-di-da, and I think that this being my introduction to it, this set of rules, was initially very jarring and confusing. And at the same time, I was relieved to have this set of rules because the concept of being intimate for the first time and all these things was so scary. And I think that I was like, oh rules, great. Like, I have something to fall back on. I have something to consult, like, in my notebook. And then, of course, like so many other things in my life, I came to really value the laws of Niddah. But I also think that I wanted to get into the mind of Fortune, this young woman who is learning all these things for the first time and how intimidating and scary that must feel in tandem with the fact that she's unsure about her actual relationship and now she has to contend with laws around her body and intimacy and sex and so it was a no-brainer.
No, I really appreciate that, your personal perspective. I think as a reader, it also felt like it was really grounding the story in those elements of tradition and what the community was like aside from just like their lived experience of it. It was like a broader grounding element of what the community is like. So I thought it was a really well-placed element there.
What we've been talking about this whole time is really just the sisters and that dynamic. So what inspired that dynamic?
Esther Levy Chehebar:
I am one of three sisters. I do have a brother. And I am fascinated, intrigued, and also in love with the idea of sisterhood. I think that there's so much ingrained competition. And so much of my life has been, how do I stand out? How do I separate myself from my sisters and what makes me different and, for my sisters, what makes them different from each other, from me. How does our bond inform our relationship with our mother? You know your sisters are the best friends that you couldn't or wouldn't choose and unlike a friend, or at least most of the time, you're not breaking up with them. These sisters live together. In some cases they share a room, they share common spaces. And I really wanted to get at that feeling of claustrophobia, but also at that immense sense of relief that you have these women to go through life with. And no matter the fighting and the different paths and they all take different paths, there is a deep sense of respect and love and you know we, sometimes we measure ourselves against our sisters, for better or for worse. It informs who we are and who we'll become and I think that's an extremely powerful thing.
You do it really, really well. That spirit of loyal and competitive and loving and claustrophobia, as you say. And thank you for being here. I love this book and I hope lots of people enjoy it.
Thank you so much for having me.
Thank you so much for joining us today for the Five Books. Our guest today was Esther Chehebar talking about her novel Sisters of Fortune. You can find a link to the book and all the others Esther discussed in our show notes. If you'd like an email reminder to keep you up to date with new episodes, plus links to all the books we discussed directly into your inbox, you can sign up in the show notes below or on our website, fivebookspod.org.
If you enjoyed our show, please be sure to subscribe and share with friends and family and rate and review an Apple podcast or wherever you listen. Rating and reviewing really does help new listeners find our show. You can email us feedback or author recommendations at team at five books, pods.org. You can find us on Instagram at five books pod or on Facebook, the five books podcast. I'm Tali Rosenblatt Cohen. Our producer is Odelia Rubin. Editorial and website support from Sarah Waring.
Music by Dov Rosenblatt and Blue Dot Sessions. Art by Dina Friedman. Thanks especially to the Jewish Book Council.
