I was immediately engrossed by this story about Barbara, a kind-hearted, middle class woman who grew up in the Orthodox Jewish community in Milwaukee. Barbara had an early idyllic childhood, shielded from hardship, deep into connection with friends and Jewish community, when she finds out a secret about her mother with devastating impact. Washing the Dead is about how the fallout from this secret has shaped Barbra's current relationship with her adolescent daughter and her aging mother. I was particularly gripped by the relationship between the teenage Barbra and her mother especially as her mother becomes increasingly despairing and disconnected from the family. Witnessing Barbra carry the burden of her mother's secret and her subsequent breakdown, while trying to care for her was heartbreaking. These sections of the book felt very immediate to me and I could feel the dread that Barbara experiences as anger and fear divide mother and daughter until her mother leaves the family and Barbara moves out to begin her own journey as an adult. The second part of the book shows how Barbara, overwhelmed by her mother's aging and subsequent move closer, and her worry that her daughter will carry the legacy of depression and poor decision making into the next generation almost falls apart. This part of the book felt somewhat flat to me. It was moving to read about how the rabbi's wife reached out to the adult Barbara to take responsibility for the ways that Barbara became somewhat of an outcast in the temple, and help her understand her mother better yet some sections felt distant and not as riveting as the childhood story.I loved the title of the book and all it implies about how Barbara took care of her mother and herself, along with the rabbi's wife and others. I saw it as a gift; to her mother's imperfect life, to her own growth and ability to forgive and her own wise daughter's counsel during this time.Thank you to Edelweiss for allowing me to read this book for as honest review.
Washing the Dead by Michelle BrafmanDid you ever feel like you’re a member of a group until you find out that you aren’t? You may seek explanations, search for hidden stories, do outlandish things, and find yourself on an entirely different path. Michelle Brafman effectively dramatizes this in “Washing the Dead.” Picture a mansion once filled with family, friends and lovely parties. Now picture it being transformed into a Jewish Orthodox temple, Mikveh included. Pious, structured, austere and quiet. Inside the sacred traditions of an exclusive community are glimpsed and vetted out for readers unawares. “Washing the Dead” is a full bodied narrative which details rite and ritual three times and in three different ways for three different purposes. Themes of loss and transformation are woven as narrator and daughter, Barbara Pupnick-Blumfeld learns the backstory of her mother’s emotional decline. Barabara, once nestled in the Orthodox fold is propelled out into the broader world and discovers who she is beyond their rules and practices. While this sounds empowering, it is entirely painful, confusing, scary and not her choice. A patchwork of moments from three generations of women from one family are stitched together as narrative time moves forward and backward. Each woman, young and old carries a central conflict which culminates in crystal clarity at the story’s end.Brafman shows us that we pass more down to one another than DNA. We pass our story, our pain, our triumph, our discovery, and our evolution. In a delicate manner, “Washing the Dead” raises the questions: During our final moments, who is there to witness? Who is there to send us off? How do they come to this moment and how do they leave?
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tThanks to LibraryThing Early Reviewers and Prospect Parks for providing me with a finished copy of Washing the Dead to read and review. Washing the Dead details the struggle of Barbara Blumfield to come to grips with her mother's perceived abandonment of the family and to try to reconcile their relationship. There are several other issues that she's dealing with that make this goal difficult to achieve which are her daughter's struggle with a sports injury and her ADD and also her mother's Alzheimers which becomes progressively worse throughout the book. The book moves back and forth from the present day to Barbara's teen years in the seventies. The flashbacks in the book help the reader learn what lead up to Barbara's break from Orthodox Judaism as well as what caused the rift in the relationship with her mother. I thought Washing Dead was at its best when it was detailing the traditions and rituals of the church but fell a little flat when it came to Barbara and her personal relationships. I felt so frustrated with Barbara at times because she seemed to be more focused on all the negative things in her life rather than focusing on the positive. Also, at times I thought her character was a bit petty and came off as being a bit immature for a middle aged woman. Overall the book was well written and I enjoyed it enough that I would check out other titles by this author.
—Sherrie
Very well written novel about an Orthodox Jewish community in Milwaukee, main character is a woman who grew up in the ultra orthodox congregation there, and then left and came back. The title, "washing the dead" refers to the Orthodox tradition of washing the body of a loved one or a member of the shul, so I first thought it would be morbid, but it wasn't. Rather, book opens up with the first washing, which Barbara, the main character participates in at the request of the Rebbitzin as a way to pull her back into the community.
—Joan Schenberg
Not a sleazy murder mystery like it sounds, but the story of an orthodox Jewish girl and her break from the sect that nurtured her while she was growing up. The protagonist, Barbara, is a conflicted mother of a conflicted teenager and the daughter of a very conflicted woman. The mother caused the rift with the shul and in turn left her daughter in a vacuum, forcing her to search for meaning in life on her own. As Barbara tells her story, we learn of the different chapters in her life and what finally brought her back to shul and to the task of washing the dead, the highest mitzvah one can perform. Definitely recommend.
—Judy Bart
