As in her previous novel, My Holocaust, One Hundred
Philistine Foreskins is yet another Tova Reich venture into high
satire. This is her genre, and she
fearless in her use of its tools.
Nothing escapes her caustic scrutiny.
Everything is fair game.
My Holocaust exposed the dreadful commercialization of
the Shoah, while Foreskins offers a look at a wider topic, the place of women
in the orthodox Jewish world. Reich has a great
deal to say on this topic, and brings a large amount of background knowledge
and information as she lays out her plot.
Reich is an intractably Jewish writer, and it helps the reader to have a rich knowledge of Judaism to appreciate this book. She throws everything into this novel but the Jewish kitchen sink. The narrator does explain some of the more
abstruse references and allusions, but sometimes this does not go too far. Large parts of this novel are an inside joke.
In the end, Foreskins hovers in a netherworld
between humor and rage, offering a glimmer of hope in a world without hope for women.
It is as if Reich, despite all
her satirical gifts, which are a thin mask covering her rank misanthropy, cannot give up on humanity and its particular
manifestation, the Jewish people.
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