Author Naomi Ragen to pay NIS 233,000 for plagiarism

Jerusalem court ruled in December that book ‘Sotah’ heavily borowed from Sarah Shapiro’s work of non-fiction

The Jerusalem District Court on Tuesday ordered author Naomi Ragen to pay NIS 233,000 to author Sarah Shapiro.

Ragen, originally from New York City and now living in Jerusalem, was convicted in December of copyright infringement, theft, negligence and unjust enrichment for using parts of Shapiro’s 1990 book “Growing with My Children: A Jewish Mother’s Diary” for her own book “Sotah” published in 1992.

While Ragen denied having copied Shapiro’s work, she did acknowledge during the trial that she read and enjoyed “Growing with My Children” during the same period that she was writing “Sotah” and she told the court that parts of Shapiro’s book “got stuck in [her] head.” The judge rejected this narrative, calling it “unreasonable and unreliable”.

In January, Ragen was acquitted of stealing parts of “The Lion and the Cross” by the late Michal Tal for her book “The Ghost of Hannah Mendes.” Cynthia Rosengarten has accused Ragen of basing “The Sacrifice of Tamar” on her short autobiographical story “A Marriage Made in Heaven.”