Sotah by Naomi Ragen

From the Author's Foreword ...

The story of Dina Reich began with a newspaper article in an Israeli daily, a classic tale of extramarital love which— because of its milieu in the ultra-Orthodox Jews of Jerusalem, took on interesting nuances for me which I decided to explore.

There were several reasons for this. My first book, Jephte's Daughter, had taken place in that setting. I felt I had more to say about that world, particularly the relationship between the sexes, with a focus on marriage. I wanted to show a different kind of marriage, a more representative one, than that of Isaac Harshen and Batsheva HaLevi in Jephte's Daughter. With Dina Reich and Yehuda Gutman, I found the married love story I needed to continue my portrait of marriage in the ultra-Orthodox world.

It was with the publication of Sotah that I began to feel most keenly the difficulties of being a writer of English novels living in a Hebrew-speaking country. The material, its descriptions of the people and places of the Jerusalem I loved, lived in, and knew so well, could not really be appreciated, I felt, by those living outside the country. While its publication by Crown Books in 1992, was well-received by American and British readers, it was only when Sotah became the first of my books to be translated into Hebrew and was published in Israel by Keter Publishing, that I understood how right had been my instincts. Sotah - called in Hebrew "And to your husband shall be your desire," based on the verse from Genesis — became a literary phenomenon in Israel, leading best-seller lists for over 92 weeks. The experience of finally reaching my Israeli neighbors and friends made a lasting and unique impression upon me, giving me a sense of truly having set down deep and permanent roots in the country and culture I had chosen as home. I felt too, enormous satisfaction that my work had, finally, been judged by a jury of my peers.

With the publication of this Reader's Guide Edition, I am delighted to be able to once more introduce a new generation of readers to this book which did so much to bridge the gap between the Jewish experience in Israel and America, both for myself, and for my readers.