Anything But Yes

• Author: Joie Davidow
• Genre: Historical Fiction
• Publication Date: October 10, 2023
• Publisher: Monkfish Book Publishing

Thank you to Edelweiss and Monkfish Book Publishing for providing me with an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

CONTENT WARNING: antisemitism, religious intolerance, grief, torture, self-harm, trauma

“An intricately detailed novel of resistance and community.” — Kirkus Reviews

This beautiful new work of historical fiction was inspired by the diary of an 18th-century Roman Jewish girl who was imprisoned in a convent cell by the Catholic Church in an attempt to forcibly convert her. Anything but Yes  is the true story of a young woman’s struggle to defend her identity in the face of relentless attempts to destroy it. In 1749, eighteen-year-old Anna del Monte was seized at gunpoint from her home in the Jewish ghetto of Rome and thrown into a convent cell at the Casa dei Catecumeni, the house of converts. With no access to the outside world, she withstood endless lectures, threats, promises, isolation and sleep deprivation. If she were she to utter the simple word “yes,” she risked forced baptism, which would mean never returning to her home, and total loss of contact with any Jew—mother, father, brother, sister—for the rest of her life. 

Even in Rome, very few people know the story of the Ghetto or the abduction of Jews, the story of popes ever more intent on converting every non-Catholic living in the long shadow of the Vatican. Young girls and small children were the primary targets. They were vulnerable, easily confused, gullible. Anna del Monte was different. She was strong, brilliant, educated, and wrote a diary of her experiences. The document was lost for more than 200 hundred years, then rediscovered in 1989.  Anything but Yes is also based on Davidow’s extensive research on life in the eighteenth-century Roman ghetto, its traditions, food, personalities, and dialect. Includes Italian to English glossary.

I stumbled across this book, and it struck me as incredibly interesting. There are a lot of books told from the Ashkenazi point of view, and I’m always interested in learning more about the Sephardic Jewish experience. This historical fiction story sounded perfect, especially since it’s based on a real-life diary of Anna del Monte, a young woman who actually experienced an abduction by the church during their period of forced conversions of Jews in Rome.

The story was fascinating. I immediately found myself connecting to Anna, a young, well-educated Jewish woman who grew up in the ghetto of Rome, where all of Rome’s Jews were confined. I loved her close ties to her family, and how strong the bonds between Anna and her siblings, as well as her parents were. In addition, Anna has close ties with others in the community, although her relationships were limited to other women. Even once she’s confined in the Casa dei Catacumeni, she occasionally attempts to speak to the priests and nuns, but is disappointed by how they interact.

During the 18th century in Rome, the Pope was on a mission to convert every Jew in Rome to Catholicism. Punitive measures were enacted to push the Jews towards conversion—blocking Jews from the majority of professions, forcing them to live in the crowded ghetto, mandating that they attend a sermon each week, and heavily taxing them for a variety of things, including guards around the ghetto, and payment for the weekly sermons, upkeep of the Casa dei Catacumeni, as well as requiring a monetary payment from the Jews for basically existing, putting them in massive debt to the church. However, these measures only converted a small number of Jews.

Instead, the church discovered that having people denounce Jews, where they said that a Jew had expressed some interest in Catholicism, could give them free rein to put a Jew in the Casa dei Catacumeni and get them to convert, no matter how. Additionally, if a man converted and said that a Jewish woman was his betrothed, he need offer no further evidence than his word to have her imprisoned and converted, forcibly if need be.

But when Anna del Monte is taken from her home at gunpoint and imprisoned in the Casa dei Catacumeni, all she knows is that she can say anything but yes. Because once she says the word ‘yes,’ all they have to do is sprinkle some holy water on her and she’ll be converted to Catholicism before she can blink her eyes. But Anna still has her mind, and uses it to think and remember the lessons she has learned throughout her life: to question, to think for herself, and to do what she believes in her heart is right. One conversation with a priest ended like this:

“‘You are an impudent and stubborn girl. Why is it so difficult for you to accept the wisdom of a man who is much older and more learned than yourself?’ ‘I am very sorry, sir, but I have not been taught to accept. I have been taught to ponder, to question, to think. I do not need to pray to your pictures or your statues. God is with me everywhere, and I pray directly to him.’”

It’s easy to empathize with her, being locked in a cell with nothing to do to occupy her mind, no answers as to why she was imprisoned, and the nuns and priests coming in at all hours of the day and night to pray over her, lecture her, cajole, and threaten her. While she wasn’t physically tortured, hunger and sleep deprivation were used as tools of torture, to get her to a place where she’d be willing to convert.

“And she knows that she could never believe in the benevolence of a faith that resorts to such cruel means of persuasion.”

The writing style wasn’t my favorite part of the story, I have to admit. Although the arguments given by the clergy was awfully repetitive, this is the type of lecturing that Anna was subjected to ceaselessly, day and night. It makes sense that it would be repetitive and even a bit boring, because the arguments weren’t innovative or interesting on their own anyway. I found myself endlessly frustrated by their arguments, the circular logic, the inability to accept that someone else might think differently, the ignorance, and the sheer intolerance that people showed towards each other, while simultaneously preaching a message of love and tolerance and ‘love thy neighbor.’ It makes the Catholic Church seem endlessly hypocritical, and the worst part was that they showed absolutely no insight into this. Anna’s refusal to show even the slightest willingness to convert threw their entire belief system into question, especially when so many Jews continued to cling to their beliefs, even when doing so had such harmful consequences on one’s social, financial, and legal bearing. 

Davidow clearly did a ton of research for this book. The conditions of Jewish people in Rome in the 18th century are well-studied, along with the little idioms that are used (apparently there’s an English-Italian glossary in the back of the print version, but not the ARC). The way that the church operated at the time, and how conversions were accomplished at that time were also described in detail here. Even the Jewish prayers, customs, and beliefs were represented wonderfully, except for one little detail. During the story, it is mentioned not once, but twice, by Anna, that observant Jews have sex through a sheet. This is a myth, and it has been propagated throughout history despite it being far from the truth. It probably grew out of the tradition of men wearing tzitzit, a fringed undergarment that is worn beneath a shirt. It’s a garment with a hole in the center for the head, and it drapes down the front and the back of the man’s torso, so that the fringes can be seen hanging out of a shirt. But orthodox Jews have sex just like everyone else do, without a sheet between them. And there was no need to include this false detail in such a meticulously researched book, especially when it had nothing to do with anything.

“A sheet separated them, even when they made love.”

Overall, this was a great read. I found it fascinating to see how much influence the Catholic Church had over so many parts of the world, and how it wielded that influence to harm Jewish people in so many ways. I couldn’t help but feel for the Jews of Rome, especially knowing that this was based on a true story, and discovering what really ended up happening to Anna at the end of the story. It was especially interesting to me to see what life was like for Sephardic Jews throughout history. The immense historical research that went into this book is so impressive, and this is the kind of book I walked away from having learned more than when I started reading.

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