Naomi Ragen

Naomi Ragen

Naomi Ragen (born July 10, 1949) is an American-Israeli Orthodox Jewish author, playwright and women’s rights activist. Ragen lives in Jerusalem and writes in English. A recurring theme in her fictional works is injustice against women in the Haredi Jewish community. She has been sued in Israel for plagiarism three times, and was convicted twice. Ragen maintained that she was being persecuted for her criticism of Haredi Judaism.

Biography

Naomi Ragen (née Terlinsky) was born in New York City. She received an Orthodox Jewish education before completing a degree in literature at Brooklyn College. In 1971, she moved to Israel with her husband. In 1978, she received a master’s degree in literature from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She has four children and lives in Jerusalem.

Literary career

Ragen’s first three novels describe the lives of Haredi Jewish women in Israel and the United States, dealing with themes that had not previously been addressed in that society's literature: wife-abuse (Jephte’s Daughter: 1989), adultery (Sotah: 1992) and rape (The Sacrifice of Tamar: 1995). Reaction to these novels in the Orthodox and Haredi communities was mixed. Some hailed her as a pioneer for exposing problems which the communities had pretended did not exist, while others criticized her for "hanging out the dirty laundry" for all to see and for obsessively seeking to portray Haredi life negatively.

Her next novel (The Ghost of Hannah Mendes: 1998) is the story of a Sephardic family brought back from assimilation by the spirit of their ancestor Gracia Mendes, a 16th-century Portuguese crypto-Jew.

Chains Around the Grass (2002) is a semi-autobiographical novel dealing with the failure of the American dream.

In The Covenant (2004) Ragen deals with an ordinary family confronted with Islamic terrorism.

The Saturday Wife (2007), the story of a rabbi's wayward wife, is loosely based on Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, and is a satire of modern Jewish Orthodoxy.

The Tenth Song (2010) is the story of a family whose life is shattered when a false accusation of terrorism is made against the father.

The Sisters Weiss (2013) is a novel about two sisters born into an Orthodox family in 1950s Brooklyn.

The Devil in Jerusalem (2015) is a mystery featuring Detective Bina Tzedek.

Theater

Women’s Minyan (2001) is a play about a Haredi woman fleeing from her adulterous and abusive husband. She finds that he has manipulated the rabbinical courts to deprive her of the right to see or speak to her twelve children. The story is based on a true incident. Women’s Minyan ran for six years in Habima (Israel's National Theatre) and has been staged in the United States, Canada and Argentina.

Columnist

Ragen is also a columnist for The Jerusalem Post.

Lawsuits

In 2007, an American-Israeli writer sued Naomi Ragen for plagiarizing her work. Michal Tal filed a charge of plagiarism against Ragen′s novel The Ghost of Hannah Mendes. Tal died mid-trial, before a verdict was reached. The court set aside the unfinished trial with a provision that it could be reopened by Tal's descendants if they so desired in future.

In a separate lawsuit, the author Sarah Shapiro filed claim that Ragen's novel Sotah, published in 1992,contained plagiarized text from Shapiro's autobiographical non-fiction memoir entitled Growing with My Children: A Jewish Mother's Diary. published in 1990.

In 2010, a plagiarism lawsuit was filed against Ragen by a third author, Sudy Rosengarten, who claimed that Chapter 24 of Naomi Ragen's romance novel The Sacrifice of Tamar, published in1994, was a plagiarized version of Rosengarten's autobiographical story, "A Marriage Made in Heaven," which had been published in 1991 [Vol. 1, pg. 302-316] of Our Lives: An Anthology of Jewish Women's Writings, compiled and edited by Sarah Shapiro. In court, Rosengarten spoke of her pained astonishment upon finding that an episode from her own life had been copied in its entirety, often word by word and line by line, and that her words were placed into the mouths of fictional characters in someone else's story.

During the four-year trial of Shapiro vs. Ragen, the defendant (Ragen) tried to "turn the tables" on the plaintiff (Shapiro)by accusing her accuser of having plagiarized the writings and teachings of Dr. Miriam Adahan and Dr.Miriam Levi, from their books Raising Children to Care and Effective Jewish Parenting, respectively. Naomi Ragen also counter-accused Shapiro of having "plagiarized" a 1960s pop song sung by Carol King, insofar as Shapiro's diary entry of October 31st, 1988 (p. 354) describes listening to "You've Got a Friend" on the radio, and quotes its verses without giving proper attribution to the music company which holds its copyright.

Dr. Adahan and Dr. Levi testified under oath in court that Naomi Ragen's counter-charges of plagiarism were "absurd," and "almost too silly to refute,"' since Growing With My Children was in part about Shapiro's participation in their parenting workshops and all quotes had been sent by Shapiro to both teachers for pre-publication review and approval, and had been explicitly attributed to them.

To her editors at Random House, Ragen denied in 1994 having met Sarah Shapiro and denied any recollection of Shapiro's book. A letter written in 1990 to "Mrs. Shapiro" and signed by Naomi Ragen was produced as evidence in court, however. In the letter, Ragen invites Shapiro to her [Ragen's] home. Ragen, praises the book for its humor and honesty, and suggests that if its Jewish and Israeli cultural elements were modified for the general American audience, the diary could be successfully marketed by a New York publisher, yet Shapiro chose not to act on Ragen's suggestion. In 1994 Shapiro started hearing from readers of both books that Naomi Ragen's novel Sotah contained passages and two major episodes copied, often word for word, from Growing With My Children: A Jewish Mother's Diary.

On 11 December 2011, the Jerusalem District Court in a 92-page opinion by Judge Yosef Shapira upheld Sarah Shapiro′s plagiarism claim, ruling that Ragen′s "plagiarism was tantamount to a premeditated act;" that Ragen had knowingly copied from Shapiro's work in her novel Sotah, which shows “a resemblance in the subjects and motifs, resemblances in language and terminology, similarity and resemblance in dialogue, at times word for word, and cumulative violations." Shapiro had asked for NIS 1 million in damages. The court gave the parties a month to negotiate compensation, and indicated it would decide at a later date re. copyright infringement.

On 3 January 2012, Israel's Supreme Court accepted Ragen’s appeal in the case brought against her by Michal Tal, although no verdict had been issued by the lower court due to Tal's death while the case was being tried. The decision, by Supreme Chief Justice Dorit Beinish and Justices Gronis and Arbel, required Tal's descendants to agree and sign on to a document which stated that "There is not and never was any basis whatsoever for any claim [by Michal Tal] of plagiarism or copyright infringement brought against Naomi Ragen in the Jerusalem District Court." "Tal’s claims were delusional," Ragen said, “but the travesties and suffering I endured for five years over this frivolous case were very real. It has been a truly horrifying experience for me and my family. I am immensely pleased that justice has been finally been served and that the truth has come out."

On 27 March 2012, Naomi Ragen and Sarah Shapiro reached a settlement. Ragen was ordered to pay Shapiro 233,000 NIS (over $62,500) for copyright infringement, an unprecedented amount in a plagiarism case in Israel. In June 2012, Ragen appealed the District Court's decision in the Supreme Court, claiming that it set a precedent that would deny Israeli writers freedom of expression.

On 6 November 2013, the Israeli Supreme Court accepted a settlement between Ragen and Shapiro which did not overturn the original verdict of the District Court's decision, but which sought a "softening" of the financial aspect of the settlement. Shapiro was asked by the Supreme Court, "for the sake of peace between the parties" to donate her personal winnings to one or two charities of her choice, as the condition for Naomi Ragen's dropping of the Supreme Court appeal. To the media Ragen claimed victory, although it was Ragen who lost 233,000 shekels to Shapiro and who paid Shapiro's attorneys and court costs. Ragen is still subject to an injunction against reprinting her book Sotah.

As requested by the Supreme Court, Shapiro donated the 97,000 shekels awarded her for personal damages, not including Ragen's payment of Shapiro's legal costs, to Yad Eliezer and Yad Sarah, two charity organizations.

Ragen was required to remove all plagiarized text from future editions of Sotah.

In November 2014, the District court of Jerusalem upheld Sudy Rosengarten's lawsuit in its entirety, ruling that Naomi Ragen had consciously copied, extensively and blatantly, from Sudy Rosengarten's autobiographical story in the novel The Sacrifice of Tamar. Ragen was ordered to compensate Rosengarten in shekels worth approximately $19,000.

Ragen claims that the lawsuits against her are an attempt to silence her criticism of the Haredi community’s treatment of women and for her women's rights activism. In 2006, Ragen had joined several other women in petitioning the courts to force the Israeli government and public bus companies to discontinue gender separated bus lines, in which men and women sit apart. Ragen claims that she was once herself harassed after riding in the "wrong" section.

External links

• Author's website