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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 three times, and was convicted twice of plagiarism in lawsuits filed by writers Sarah Shapiro and Sudy Rosengarten, from whose works Ragen had convicted of having plagiarized, and which Ragen had transformed for purposes the original authors not intended (i.e. fictionalized criticism of Haredim). During the 4-year trial, the defendant Naomi Ragen counter-accused the plaintiff herself, Sarah Shapiro, of having plagiarized from Raising Children to Care and Effective Jewish Parenting, by Dr.Miriam Adahan and Dr. Miriam Levi respectively. Ragen also counter-accused her accuser of having quoted verses of a popular 1960s song made famous by Carol King, without giving proper attribution to the copyright holder. Dr.Adahan and Dr. Levi testified under oath in court and submitted written testimony on Sarah Shapiro's behalf, calling Ragen's charge "absurd," since Growing With My Children was in large part about Shapiro's participation in their parenting workshops, and all quotes had been sent to both teachers, Dr. Adahan and Dr. Levi, for pre-publication review and approval, and had been attributed to them in full. Ragen's charge of plagiarism concerning "You've Got a Friend" elicited an acknowledgment by Sarah Shapiro that the song she quoted on pg. 354 of her diary was an entry about having heard the song on the radio, and that the song's copyright-owner should indeed have been asked for permission to reprint
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), a novel about two sisters born into an Orthodox family in 1950's 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.
Ragen is also a columnist for The Jerusalem Post.
Lawsuits
In 2007, two American-Israeli writers accused Ragen of plagiarizing their 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. After their mother's death, Naomi Ragen brought Michal Tal's children to the Supreme Court, to require that they agree in writing that the case was "without basis." In a separate lawsuit, the author Sarah Shapiro filed claim that in her novel Sotah, published in 1992, Ragen had plagiarized from Shapiro's autobiographical non-fiction book Growing with My Children: A Jewish Mother's Diary,. published in 1990.
Ragen denied both accusations.
Shapiro charged that Ragen had extensively copied, often word for word, from two central episodes of Shapiro's autobiographical account. Shapiro related that Ragen had invited Shapiro to her home in 1990, after being given a copy of the book by its publisher's head, Rabbi Moshe Dombe, the head of Targum Press. Shapiro testified that in 1994 she started hearing from readers that Sotah contained passages and two major episodes obviously copied from Growing With My Children. “In downtown Jerusalem,” said Shapiro, "I found a copy of Sotah in a rack of best-sellers...and started leafing through the pages. In just moments, to my shock, I ... With a pounding heart I rushed home and immediately dialed Ms. Ragen’s number. I told her what I had found and she said she didn’t know what I was talking about”.
In 2010, Michal Tal died while her case was being tried.
A third writer, Sudy Rosengarten, claimed that Chapter 24 of Ragen's fictional novel The Sacrifice of Tamar, which deals with a black child born to a Haredi family as a result of a long-hidden rape of the grandmother, was plagiarized from Rosengarten's autobiographical short story A Marriage Made in Heaven, published in 1991 in Volume I (pgs. 302-316) of Our Lives: An Anthology of Jewish Women's Writings, a series compiled and edited by Sarah Shapiro. Ragen denied this allegation as well.
On 11 December 2011, the Jerusalem District Court in a 92-page opinion by Judge Yosef Shapira upheld Shapiro′s plagiarism claim, ruling that Ragen′s “plagiarism was tantamount to a premeditated act”, stating that Ragen 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 if copyright infringement had taken place.
On 3 January 2012, Israel's Supreme Court accepted author Naomi 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 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, claiming that it set a precedent that would deny Israeli writers freedom of expression.
On 6 November 2013, the Supreme Court accepted a settlement between Ragen and Shapiro which did not overturn the verdict of the District Court's decision, but which sought a "softening" of the financial 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.
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 the plagiarized passages 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. She was ordered to compensate Rosengarten in shekels worth app. $19,000).
Ragen claims that the lawsuits against her are an attempt to silence her criticism of the Haredi community’s treatment of women.
Women's rights activism
In 2006, Ragen 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.
References
- http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=21449
- ^ http://www.cross-currents.com/archives/2013/11/10/naomi-ragen-drops-plagiarism-appeal-claims-victory/
- http://www.cross-currents.com/archives/2014/11/27/judgment-rendered/
- http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/jerusalem-court-finds-author-naomi-ragen-guilty-of-plagiarism-1.400891
- http://www.cross-currents.com/archives/2007/04/24/naomi-ragen-and-the-plagiarism-case/
- The Tenth Song
- Esther Solomon (2006-11-06). "Sins of the husbands". Haaretz. Retrieved 2011-12-13.
- Dan Izenberg (2007-02-23). "Naomi Ragen denies plagiarism". Jerusalem Post. Retrieved 2011-12-13.
- ^ Maya Sela (2011-12-12). "Jerusalem court finds author Naomi Ragen guilty of plagiarism". Haaretz. Retrieved 2011-12-13.
- Dan Izenberg (2007-03-08). "Second writer accuses Naomi Ragen, popular novelist, of plagiarism". Jerusalem Post. Retrieved 2011-12-13.
- http://www.jpost.com/National-News/Court-rules-Naomi-Ragen-plagiarized-in-best-seller
- ^ Ben Hartman (201-12-13). "Court rules Naomi Ragen plagiarized in best-seller". Jerusalem Post. Retrieved 2011-12-13.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|date=(help) - Akiva Novick (2011-12-13). "Naomi Ragen found guilty of plagiarism". Ynetnews. Retrieved 2011-12-13.
- YNet. "Court rules Naomi Ragen did not plagiarize". YNet.
- Cross-Currents Blog, March 28, 2012 http://www.cross-currents.com/archives/2012/03/28/naomi-ragen-ordered-to-pay-233000-shch-for-plagiarism/
- Haaretz, July 5, 2012 http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/israeli-author-naomi-ragen-files-appeal-against-plagiarism-ruling-1.448905/
- Walla, November 6, 2013 http://e.walla.co.il/?w=/6/2692498&m=1
- http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/173699#.Unq3sySE4kN
- "Israel bus rule sparks religious row". One News (New Zealand). 2008-01-15. Retrieved 2008-02-11.