Rachel Aviv is a writer for whom I am beginning to watch when The New Yorker arrives..
Me too! So much so that last week I went to her website and looked up some of her old articles, for the
New Yorker and elsewhere. I'd read a few of the
New Yorker ones before and had been impressed.
I'm finding her article on sexual abuse in the Hasidic community in New York (Nov. 10) fascinating
Oh, I didn't know that's what it was about! I tend to find articles about Hassidim kind of dutiful, so I was going to skip it. But if there's sexual abuse involved, I'm more interested, for this reason: There were a wave of high-profile sex-abuse cases in the Amish community around here a few years ago, discovered only after some women left the community and disclosed it (as I recall). Same thing -- an insular, closed community. Same with Catholic priests, for that matter.
Those cases make me grateful for the current laws and attitudes about sex abuse, at least in this culture. Yes, sometimes people do go overboard or underboard with them, for sure. But when you see what happens in closed communities it's a reminder that, in the past, that was undoubtedly prevalent everywhere -- in mainstream communities,in many culture. It's mind-blowing to think how many people suffered as a result.