On Marriage

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And, sure enough, pulling the book out of my bag, I feel a little anxious and nervous, and instantly worry that this indicates a certain level of paranoia. In fact, no one reacts to my reading matter, apart from a lady on the Victoria Line who gives me a meaningful smile. I interpret this as a silent “I’m Jewish too.” And then I ponder how this fits Baum’s thesis, that the emotions we think of as stereotypically Jewish — including guilt, self-hatred and paranoia — are pretty much universal as globalisation has left people, Jews and non-Jews, feeling marginalised, uprooted and existentially threatened. Create or connect your ORCID ID in Pure (opens in a new tab). Select ‘Edit profile’ and then 'Create or Connect your ORCID ID'.

Baum is an erudite and entertaining guide through the landscape of marriage, bringing a lively intellectual rigour to changing attitudes on matters of religion, feminism, parenting and sexuality. She draws on a formidably broad frame of reference, from Kant to Fleabag via George Eliot and Nora Ephron, and any number of intriguing detours through less familiar literary and cinematic representations. But at the end of all her analysis, a definitive understanding remains elusive: “Having thought so much about marriage, the truth is that I still don’t know what I think about it. Pretty much all the positions I’ve encountered on the subject seem to me to have a great deal of validity.” DS. If you can insult yourself funnier than they’re about to insult you, then it takes the power away from them, and you can defend yourself. For me, it’s inevitably linked to Jewishness, the Jewish experience, and the Jewish fool — the badkhn. That’s the sort of fool trying to make his way or her way through the world through wits, because that’s all they have. In a sense, all comedians are Jewish, all people are Jewish. Everyone is a little bit defensive and has to fight their way out of it. This is really your territory, Devorah, with your books. Do you think everyone is a Jew? It’s interesting that Devorah’s wanting to have children and having children has convinced you of the worth of having children, and the same has occurred in reverse for Devorah regarding your wish to make a film.For me it was because I found myself doing something I never imagined myself doing: marriage. I always knew marriage doesn’t work – just look at my parents.

Baum “likes religion a lot”, but is not currently a member of a synagogue. She grew up Orthodox, the couple were married by Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg of Masorti and for a time she was involved with the Yakar community. “I am always feeling nostalgic for being deeply religious.” But lately I’ve been particularly inspired by a writer whom I’ve admired for years: the psychoanalyst Adam Phillips. His latest book In Writing is inspiring in lots of ways. He suggests, for instance, that writing can be a source of unmitigated pleasure that needn’t necessarily be served up with a side portion of masochism. Who knew? And he also mentions a detail about his own writing process that I find incredibly inspiring: that when he writes something that he isn’t completely sure about, but which he still finds interesting, he leaves it in. So being a writer needn’t require one to preside over one’s writing imperiously, like an Author. Surely there can be few things more inspiring to a writer than a notion like that. Baum’s company is so good, her home so welcoming, that I accept another cup of tea when our interview is done. Which prompts another joke from her book. Her loss is still raw — she has tears in her eyes as we discuss it — a moment, ironically, interrupted by her husband arriving to film our interview. And there’s another irony to discuss, the humour and over-the-top emotion surounding the very notion of being a Jewish mother. I also like rites of passage that require communal recognition. I like ceremonies of transition. I like religion.Isabel Millar is a PhD candidate in Psychoanalysis and Contemporary Theory at Kingston University. Her research is on Lacan, sex and technology, with a focus on Sex-bots and Artificial Intelligence. She has published articles with Psychoanalytische Perspectieven and JCFAR and blogs at Hysteric’s Discourse. DB. You’ve been left behind? I haven’t thought enough about that. But it’s true they’ve been much more successfully funny than you…. Alongside films centred on marriage, I have also written about marriage, e.g. in an essay I wrote for Granta 144’s special issue on gender, What Do Women Want?: reading Grace Paley after #TimesUp, while my new book, On Marriage, which crosses serious research with more creative elements, will come out with Hamish Hamilton for Penguin Random House in the UK in May 2023 and with Yale University Press in the US a little later in the year. DS. Or they can be, at least. The great thing for the right is the view that they can make jokes and be uninhibited by who they hurt. They use jokes to hide their truth. Think of ‘lulz’, used by the Daily Stormer blog. They do have these very offensive views, but as long as they can say ‘I was joking’….