From the Letter Column
The Time's Sunday Book Review's letter column, I mean

Two of Wendy Shalit's victims (and one supporter, plus Alana Newhouse from the Forward) respond. Some excerpts:

TOVA MIRVIS: ...apparently the only true experience of Orthodoxy is [Shalit's] own — and any portrayal that doesn't confirm her newfound personal fulfillment is inauthentic... The true sin seems to be portraying Orthodox Jews with any human failings, with having moments when they do not conform to the dictates of Jewish law. Shalit is not an observant reader but an ideological one. She's looking for public relations documents...

JONATHAN ROSEN: Shalit's attack... put me in mind of Oscar Wilde's observation that the 19th-century dislike of realism is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass. Wilde added that the 19th-century dislike of romanticism is the rage of Caliban not seeing his own face in a glass. Shalit's dislike seems to be for imaginative fiction itself...

BINYAMIN L. JOLKOVSKY: ...stories can be 100 percent accurate but ultimately misleading. When stereotypes are reinforced enough times without there ever being a more complete picture, there is distorted perception.

ALANA NEWHOUSE: The implicit directive in Wendy Shalit's essay is that... readers should lower their artistic standards in favor of a more palatable ''message.'' That should disquiet all who ascribe even the faintest value to art... Shalit, who came to Orthodoxy later in life... may be envious of those of us who had it all along; she seems unable to fathom how anyone could take for granted what she labored so hard to acquire. Then, on top of ''abandoning'' it, these writers went and criticized it, which must feel like just too much ingratitude for Shalit to tolerate.

[Related: Bloghd , Kvetch, Yudel, Biur, DovBear, Sarah, and many more, including Marvin Shick, who arrives late to the game, and brings a view that miss the point by ten miles or more.]