Shalom Auslander was raised in the largely Orthodox Jewish town of Monsey, New York. Monsey was a pretty town where everything was forbidden. One was forbidden to drive on the Sabbath, one was forbidden to take four steps without a yarmulke, one was forbidden to eat meat with dairy. Having eaten meat, one had to abstain from dairy for six hours; having eaten dairy, one had to abstain from meat for three hours. One was always forbidden to eat pig, at least until the Messiah arrived – only then, Rabbi Goldfisher taught him in the fourth grade, would the wicked be punished, the dead be resurrected, and the pigs be kosher.
The people of Monsey were terrified of God, and they taught Shalom to be terrified of Him, too. He learned that Sarah would one day laugh at God, so God made her barren; that Job, completely ruined, had asked “Why?” and God had come down to earth, taken him by the collar, and howled, “Who the heck do you think you are?”
In early autumn*, when the leaves choked, turned colors, and fell to their deaths, everyone gathered together in synagogues across the town and wondered, aloud and in unison, how God was going to kill them: “Who by water and who by fire, who by sword, who by beast, who by famine, who by thirst, who by storm, who by plague, who by strangulation and who by stoning.”
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*i.e., on Yom Kippur
[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #2379]