The Jerusalem maiden of the title is Esther Kaminsky, a bright and willful eleven-year-old hareidi girl living in Meah Shearim and attending the Evelina de Rothschild School in the waning days of the Ottoman Empire. A French teacher discovers her prodigious artistic talent, but the pursuit of art, as either a career or a passion, is utterly at odds with the role she is being raised for: a religious wife and mother, meant to produce sons to bring the Messiah.
Not surprisingly, Esther faces major internal conflicts, but these are less of the sort chronicled in My Name is Asher Lev, and more those of a proto-Orthodox Jewish feminist. She is jealous of the attention given to her brother’s bar mitzvah, while she is told that she will “get the honor of entering adulthood under a chupah.” She fears for the arranged marriage of her best friend, Ruthi, and tries to avert the shidduch. She challenges the norm that an unmarried young woman may not work for money. She is even attracted to the nonJewish (and illegitimate) son of her teacher—Pierre of the cerulean eyes, which she expends a great deal of energy avoiding.
Speaking of cerulean, the author is something of a painter herself, applying vivid color descriptions to the scenes of Jerusalem and its surroundings. So many historical and geographical details are faithfully executed, that it is a shame that she gets a few matters of religious observance wrong— such as suggesting that the bar mitzvah parasha is read on Friday night or that a married couple may resume sexual relations as soon as the cloths are white.
The plot takes many extraordinary turns, and Esther, after marrying a rich and somewhat modern man, finds herself in interwar France, reunited with her childhood teacher and living an artistic and bohemian life. Here the number of chance encounters and well-timed catastrophes begin to pile up in excess—turning a fine historical novel into something of a soap opera.
Despite the somewhat implausible ending, this novel is a good read, both for its depiction of life in the old Yishuv under Ottoman and British rule and for its portrayal of the inner struggles of a young woman truly seeking what Hashem wants of her while flying in the face of gender-based role expectations. Modern Jewish feminists can both enjoy and identify with this heroine.