検索キーワード： "Shalom Auslander" 自伝・回顧録

Shalom Auslander was raised like a veal in a dysfunctional family in the Orthodox community of Monsey, New York: the son of an alcoholic father; a guilt-wielding mother; and an overbearing God. Now, as he reaches middle age, Auslander begins to suspect that what plagues him is something worse, something he can't so easily escape: a story. The story. One implanted in him at an early age, a story that told him he is fallen, broken, shameful, disgusting, a story we have all been told for thousands of years, and continue to be told by the religious and secular alike, a story called "Feh."

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."