Naomi Ragen

Naomi Ragen

Naomi Ragen (née Terlinsky) was born in New York City. She received an Orthodox Jewish education before completing a bachelor’s 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). Her next novel (The Ghost of Hannah Mendes: 1998) is the story of a Sephardic family, 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. The Tenth Song (2010) is the story of a family whose life is shattered when a false accusation of terrorism. The Sisters Weiss (2013) is a novel about two sisters born into an ultra-Orthodox family in 1950s Brooklyn. The Devil in Jerusalem (2015) is a mystery featuring Detective Bina Tzedek. An Unorthodox Match (2019) a novel set in the ultraorthodox community of Boro Park, Brooklyn. An Observant Wife (2021) is a sequel to An Unorthdox Match.
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.[2] 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.