Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots

by Deborah Feldman

Hardcover, 2012

Call number

974.7 FEL

Collection

Publication

Simon & Schuster (2012), Edition: Fourth Edition, 272 pages

Description

Traces the author's upbringing in a Hasidic community in Brooklyn, describing the strict rules that governed her life, arranged marriage at the age of seventeen, and the birth of her son, which led to her plan to leave and forge her own path in life.

User reviews

LibraryThing member SqueakyChu
I can foresee that this book is going to be very controversial. It's an insider's look into the insular community of the Satmar Chasidim (a sect of ultra-Orthodox Jews). The author of this book is a young lady who grew up within this community and decided that its strict laws were not in keeping
Show More
with her individual sense of freedom. I caution those who read other reviews to be aware that some might contain retaliatory sentiments.

Personally, I thought this book was fabulous. I have read, on other book sites, how some of this story was "fabricated". As this is an autobiography, I'm not sure if this is true or not. However, the element of this writing that was most important to me was its feeling, what it expressed. I think that the author presented how she felt candidly and bravely. It's difficult to openly express opinions that stand in opposition to a very tight and controlling community.

With that being said, I very much liked how the author educated her readers about this community. Many (though not all) of the Yiddish expressions were either translated or explained. I don't think that what was written was meant to be a diatribe against Chasidic Judaism but rather a plea for the ability of the author to have her own freedom away from intense scrutiny of others. This is so real!

For those who have not read The Romance Reader, a novel by Pearl Abraham, I encourage you to do so. Abraham's book is a novel about a young girl in an ultra-Orthox Jewish community. For those who love books and reading, both Abraham's and Feldman's stories should be very appealing.

For its content, writing style, and controversial subject, this book should easily hit bestseller lists and be the recipient of multiple prizes. I look forward to seeing where this book goes and more writing by its talented author, Deborah Feldman.
Show Less
LibraryThing member Narshkite
First off, kudos to the author for leaving the cult. It takes some courage to leave everything and everyone you have ever known. Good on her. All that said, this is not a very good book.

Though the topic is interesting, the telling is dull as dirt. There is no overview of life in the community.
Show More
Feldman focuses on discrete events that reflected her discomfort with the ways of the Satmars, but it is not clear why those life experiences were so important. As a Jew, and someone who lived very close to Borough Park for some years, I understood the import of some of these events, but most readers would not have that background knowledge so they would connect even less. Also, I did not see how her repetitious tales of perceived repression served the narrative.. We get that she loved to read and it was forbidden, but the endless stories of reading and hiding books under the mattress add nothing and are (sorry for overusing this word) dull. She never explains why she thinks it is important that she tell us over and over in great detail (down to what bus she takes) about clandestine trips to the book store and library. Feldman does not explain anything at all actually. It is as if she is writing the book for herself to read. She uses a fair number of Yiddish words without defining them (and where context does not do the work of defining) which is also problematic. Again, I knew the words, but most readers would not.

The book is not helped by the writer's narcissism. It is astounding how she brazenly states her superiority as if it is not open for debate. Her future husband's family gets her "hideous" gifts, but her gifts to him were all impeccable because she has perfect taste. She really says that. When her brother in law is despondent over the breakup of his relationship with a Sephardic Jew because the parents of each disapprove of mixing Ashkenazi and Sephardic, no one can get a handle on the situation until she takes control. She knows exactly what he needs to do because all women will react to stimuli in the same way (of course we do!) Her masterful solution is based on a view of female behavior straight out of Bronte. We all know how things ended up for every Bronte heroine, so she might want to rethink that. Sorry about that digression. The point is that the author is absolutely certain she is right about absolutely everything, and everyone else is always wrong. I feel confident everyone in her family is better for her having gone. I don't need to like my memoirists, but dull and narcissistic is a bad combo. Best to avoid this one.
Show Less
LibraryThing member sparemethecensor
I absolutely loved this book. Not knowing much about Williamsburg's Hasidic sects, despite living in New York City, I came in hoping to learn about the community and why its cult-like oppression drove the author away. This book did all that and more. I loved the way she showed how many things in
Show More
her early life she did love -- her grandmother's cooking, for instance, made my mouth water every time! -- but how distant she felt from everything. I was righteously horrified by the number of crimes covered up by the community solely for the sake of being insular, and I felt like I was right there with the author as she moved further and further from the disturbing ideal of a Hasidic woman: an empty receptacle for babies whose only interests are cooking and gossip.

My only complaint about the book is that we don't learn much about her actual departure. Perhaps this is for legal reasons (I wonder if it occurred recently enough that there are still custody issues in the courts, something not addressed in the book), but I would have liked to see more about how she left, where she went, how she took her son with her when it was earlier implied this would be impossible, even how she reunites with her mother. (Her mother is introduced in the opening chapter but we don't see anything about their reunification at the end of the book, something I would have liked to learn much more about, especially given the revelation about why her mother left the sect herself.)

I learned a lot from this book and I enjoyed the storytelling the whole way along.
Show Less
LibraryThing member Citizenjoyce
The Satmar Hasidic sect was started by a rabbi who escaped Hungary in WWII. He emigrated to America and started the ascetic sect the basic belief of which was that Jewish assimilation and Zionism was the cause of the holocaust. He believed that if Jews became the best Jews possible they would not
Show More
be persecuted again. Another basic tenet was that Jews had to reproduce as many children as possible to compensate for the Jews lost in the war. Women were for reproduction; education was to be limited in females because their sole duty was the care of the house and the bearing of children. English was a sign of assimilation so only Yiddish was to be spoken, No pop culture: music, clothing or books, was allowed. Women were not just to cover their hair when they married but to shave it all off - just to prove their devotion to the sect. There was no fraternizing between males and females, marriages were arranged by the parents with the aid of a matchmaker. And to top all these restrictions, Feldman was raised by her uber-strict grandparents because she was the product of a mentally disabled father and a mother who deserted her. Her aunts, in fact the whole community took every opportunity to criticize her every action (as an expression of love) to help her overcome her indecent parentage.

Deborah Feldman has a rebellious, contrary sort of personality. She is absolutely the wrong sort of person to be stuck in a strict Hasidic community. In Jean Sasson's book American Chick in Saudi Arabia she talks of women who find comfort and protection in the misogyny of their religion. I've talked to Mormon women who are secure and content with the fact that their religion doesn't extend the priesthood to women and insists that the man is the head of the house. There are people who love to square dance or write sonnets because they find joy in being able to express themselves through the constraints of their chosen system. Feldman in not one of these people. She chafed at every opportunity that was denied her. She always thought herself special and different. She secretly read books she wasn't supposed to read. When she married, after talking to her intended for 30 minutes, she hoped her husband was a free soul like herself and that they could establish a life of freedom together. But, how many black sheep can there be in a community?

This book is the interesting story of her community and the way she extricated herself from it. Not everyone will find her likable, but she is herself and speaks for people fighting against the same misogyny and superstition that she did.
Show Less
LibraryThing member SwensonBooks
Unorthodox (Simon & Schuster, 2012) is Deborah Feldman’s memoir of growing up in Brooklyn in the most insular of Chasidic sects, the Satmars. Fathered by the village idiot and abandoned by her mother, Feldman is raised by her grandparents, married at 17, a mother at 19, and a divorcee at 22—at
Show More
which time she enrolls at Sarah Lawrence University and cuts ties with the Satmar.

Arriving, coincidentally, with recent revelations of sex abuse in the Chasidic community and a mass, “black hat” rally against the Internet, Feldman’s memoir has caused quite a stir on its own, although I’m not sure why. Of course, it’s no surprise that the community she left behind would shun her, but a careful reader who checks her or his own baggage at the door will find a measured and thoughtful accounting of growing up Satmar. The book is not Satmar-bashing, and I wish it were better understood that Feldman’s community is not simply Jewish, Orthodox, Ultra-Orthodox, or Chasidic. It’s Satmar, the secretive and cloistered Chasidic sect that Hella Winston wrote about in Unchosen: The Hidden Lives of Hasidic Rebels (Beacon Press, 2005). Only Winston writes as a sociologist and ethnographer who infiltrates, while Feldman writes as an insider who later emigrates.

The pleasure in reading Feldman’s memoir is in the mutual discovery of new worlds. As Feldman finds forbidden fruit in the public library, discovering the childhood favorites we grew up with (The Chronicles of Narnia and James and the Giant Peach), we discover her world—the traditional girls school, the isolated summer camp, and how she is educated (or not) in the religious laws of modesty and purity that govern dress, menstruation, and sex. We discover Feldman’s inner world as she shares her thoughts, struggling to reconcile her independent mind with the conformity that is expected of her. We hear her giggles, gripes, doubts, and challenges to the status quo, which she accomplishes without wholly skewering the people around her. Her accounting of her past is remarkably intimate, frank, and compelling.

Some have identified Unorthodox as a coming of age story, a bildungsroman. I prefer to identify it as kuntslerroman—a story of the artist’s progress, in this case, a literary artist. In fact, the pieties handed down by Feldman’s teachers remind me of the priest’s lectures to Stephen Dedalus’ class in James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, also the tale of a literary artist.

The quality of Feldman’s writing is especially remarkable, given the fact that this is her first book, which she wrote in a non-native language: English. Feldman’s first language is Yiddish, and not a literary Yiddish at that. In her Satmar world, most literature was “verboten,” including Torah because its contents are too racy.

The final chapter, however, disappoints as it lacks craft. Every other sentence begins with “I.” Too many proclamations and not enough information. Too many loose ends left untied. How does she support herself and her young son? Does she maintain a relationship with her grandparents? Does she continue to practice Judaism, and, if so, how? Although these important questions go unanswered, they are apparently the subject of the follow-up memoir she is developing. I hope she can bring as much insight to a book that addresses her recent past as she has brought to describing a past going back roughly 20 years.
Show Less
LibraryThing member Clara53
Shocking. Unbelievable. A disturbing kind of eye-opener. I had no idea about the rigid life of ultra-orthodox Hasidic Jews. Hard to believe that such communities exist here, in this country... No books, no singing or music even for children, and as for women - inconceivable rules of distorted
Show More
behavior. The wigs! Not being able to show their own hair but in front of their husbands, having to shave their heads, but that's not all - the intimacy issue and rules about that, the mikvah ritual, etc. It defies all imagination. Some might say that there is a certain security about that kind of community - protecting its members from the "evils" of modern society, but at what cost!!! The author comes to "the conclusion that a society" (she means the regular society, not her rigid Hasidic community) "that was honest about its perils was better than one that denied its citizens the knowledge and preparation needed to fend off their approach".

All this made Deborah Feldman, even as a young woman, "hungry for power, but not to lord over others; only to own myself" - a thing which she could in no way do in her present situation. She had to break off... It's really strange to see a memoir coming from a young woman of just 24. But it only shows how much she was "burning" to tell her compelling story and there was so much to tell...
Show Less
LibraryThing member artikaur
This is the memoir of Deborah Feldman- a former ultra-Orthodox Hasidic Jew. She gives an honest and eloquent look at a life that is foreign to most of us. There are parts of the book that are quite difficult to read due to the subject matter. Overall, a compelling, if controversial, read.
LibraryThing member Murphy-Jacobs
I swallowed this book in two gulps -- I needed a pause at one point because the quiet, subtle, barely revealed horror of it required some digesting and distance. Deborah Feldman is writing a disguise for those she left behind, trying to tell the truth without hurting anyone too much, which means a
Show More
good deal of what she went through is veiled, softened with gauze and Vasaline on the lens. So I could read a fair bit without realizing what I was really reading. It built up graduatlly, subtly, until it got heavy and fell on me.

What is it like to be born and brought up in a community built entirely on the idea of not being part of the larger world, of being all the same in its difference, united in its rejection, holding itself up and proud because it was once despised and destroyed. And what if you, born into that community, were marked by its members already as not quite belonging, as requiring more than the usual hammering to fit into the mold? Wouldn't that excessive hammering actually cause you to spring out, spill over the mold's edges, maybe squeeze from beneath the hammer alltogether?

That's how Feldman's journy struck me -- she was hammered and pressed and squeezed by what was said to her and about her, by the secrets kept, by silence and denial and "keeping things quiet" even though in the community nothing was ever really private. It was just necessary that certain people didn't know certain things, even if ignorance killed them, even if the gossip drove them mad, even if the silence permitted abuses and torments.

A surprisingly easy book to read, I should say, until those steel jaws of realization snap closed.
Show Less
LibraryThing member LoveAtFirstBook
I have been dying to get my hands on Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of my Hasidic Roots by Deborah Feldman for a while!

I got a copy of the book recently, and was absolutely delighted to see that Unorthodox compared itself to Escape by Carolyn Jessup, since that is a book that I recommend to
Show More
soooo many people (and if you haven’t picked up Escape, I’m recommending you to do so now)!

Anyway, on to the book itself.

Deborah Feldman grew up in a strict Hasidic Jewish community in Brooklyn. Her grandparents raised her because her parents were outcasts from the society. Rules were strict and relentless, and included such topics as clothing, haircuts, what was allowed to be read, etc.

As Deborah grew into her own, she started questioning and wanting more freedom, which was highly looked down upon. She married young, and because of this unhealthy marriage, developed severe anxiety.

At the age of 19, when she had a child of her own, Deborah found the courage to make some changes in order to secure her own happiness and the future of happiness for her child.

I was raised in a conservative Jewish household. We kept Kosher, I went to Temple, had a Bat Mitzvah, went to Hebrew School a few times a week. But I grew up able to wear shorts, have a proper education, go to college, and marry who I wanted to (who happens to not be Jewish) with plenty of happiness from my family.

I cannot imagine growing up in a strict household where the majority of the choices made on a daily basis were not my own. And once Deborah Feldman was able to look more critically at her own life, she realized that she did not want to either.

That doesn’t mean that being a strict religious Jewish person is a negative thing, it’s just that it wasn’t for Deborah. Just like my career choice of being a teacher isn’t for everyone.

Unorthodox allows you to enter the world of the Hasidic Jewish community of Satmar in Brooklyn. It also tells the tale of a woman brave enough to make changes in a life that she was unhappy with.

Here are some of the powerful quotes that spoke to me:

“I am not aware at this moment that I have lost my innocence. I will realize it many years later. One day I will look back and understand that just as there was a moment in my life when I realized where my power lay, there was also a specific moment when I stopped believing in authority just for its own sake and started coming to my own conclusions about the world I lived in.” – p. 29

“Bubby scoffs at my question. A Jew can never be a goy, she says, even if they try their hardest to become one. They may dress like one, speak like one, live like one, but Jewishness is something that can never be erased. Even Hitler knew that.” – p. 96: When Deborah as a child and her grandmother are discussing Jews and non-Jews.

“For a while I thought I could un-Jew myself. Then I realized that being Jewish is not in the ritual or the action. It is in one’s history. I am proud of being Jewish, because I think that’s where my indomitable spirit comes from, passed down from ancestors who burned in fired of persecution because of their blood, their faith.” -p. 251

I will recommend this book to others, both Jewish and non-Jewish, because in essence, it is a tale of breaking away from a strict society.

How am I supposed to write my review when Tilly is napping on top of the book?

Thank you to my friend over at Touchstone Books for this amazing Simon and Schuster read!

Have you read any other “breaking out of the mold” books?

Thanks for reading,

Rebecca @ Love at First Book
Show Less
LibraryThing member herdingcats
Deborah grew up in a Hasidic Jewish community in New York. It is a world that most of us know little to nothing about and those who live there know little about the rest of the world. It is a self-segregated community that polices itself, fears the rest of the world and in many ways reminds me of
Show More
what I have read about the polygamous Mormon communities. Women are not allowed to finish high school, but rather are married off at age 17 in arranged marriages and are expected to have as many children as they can. They are considered inferior to men and in some Hasidic communities, cannot even walk on the same sidewalks with men. Deborah was supposed to read only approved Yiddish literature, but her love for and desire to read books in English, which she sneaks into libraries to check out and hides under her mattress, shows her that another world does exist and plants the seed that will eventually help her to escape from the cloistered and censored existence she has been forced to live in all of her life.
Deborah shares her story in this well-written and gripping story.
Show Less
LibraryThing member Carolee888
Would you like being brought to never go into a public library? If you did manage to sneak in and get a library card which you have to hide, you would also have to hide your books under the mattress. You even have to hide 'Little Women'! If Deborah Feldman had not had the courage to wonder and then
Show More
seek out knowledge about the outside world, this book never would have been written. I believe that her desire to know more her desire to read. That desire was a fountain of information for her and also a momentary escape from her troubles.

What about losing your mom to the outside world and not knowing much about her. What about having a father who you don't feel connected to? You are raised by your grandmother and grandfather. Hugging and kissing in the family is not encouraged. Your grandfather is extra stern.

'Unorthodox' by Deborah Feldman tells about growing up in the Satmar sect of Hasidic Judaism in Williamsbug, Brooklyn. The history and politics of the sect is fascinating in itself and is touched on in the prologue.
She writes in the prologue that she changed the names but everything that happened in this book happened in real life. This is a very rare look into a secretive sect.

I did not want to put this book down for anything! It snares you from the first sentence to the last. It is not serious restrictions, there are funny moments and also a terrible lot of great food (all a particular type of kosher or it is not eaten. It is also how matchmaking is carried out in this sect and all the prescriptions of this sect.

If you read this book, you will learn so much, enjoy it so much and feel so glad that Deborah Feldman wrote it.
You will also be amazed at her talent and skill.

I recommend this book to everyone, it is truly a must read.

I received 'Unorthodox' as a win from the GoodReads program and that in no way influenced my review.
Show Less
LibraryThing member KamGeb
It was a very interesting story about her life growing up Satmar Chasidic. It isn't really about how she gets out of the Chasidic sect.
LibraryThing member Suzanne81
Unorthodox is one woman’s experience in an ultra-Orthodox Hasidic Jewish community. Her memoir follows her life beginning as a young child and through the time that she breaks away from the community and an unhappy marriage, taking her young son with her. She shows the effects that oppression,
Show More
ignorance, fear, insularity and superiority have on her and those around her.

Raised by her grandparents (her mother escaped the community for reasons which are revealed towards the end of the book and her mentally ill father wanders throughout the community as an object of pity), she never fits into the community and feels lonely and isolated. She becomes hooked on reading forbidden secular books which open up to her a different world of possibilities. She graphically shares the physical issues that contributed to the doom of her marriage. She yearns for a different life and finally takes the steps to independence.

I felt sympathy for the author through most of the book but she lost me towards the end. Perhaps this is partly due to the fact that the ending seems rushed and incomplete; she mentions how impossible it would be for her to take her son with her when she leaves and suddenly she is on her own with him, with no mention of how she managed it. I admire her for having the courage to make a new life for herself and to claim her voice. However, I felt that because of her pain she focused too heavily on the negative aspects of Hasidic life and that her story could have used some balance by sharing some of the positive aspects of the Jewish faith.
Show Less
LibraryThing member SusannahPK_83
I found this book fascinating. What a brave woman!
I recommend this book to anyone who is fascinated with other cultures and faiths.
It is a real eye opener and breaks down the barriers of the mystery and secrecy of particular orthodox religions.
LibraryThing member bluepigeon
Feldman's memoir covers quite a lot of ground, for the subject matter is not something everyone is familiar with. Those who complain that she did not explain enough about Hasidim and the Yiddish terms I think fail to understand just how much she did actually explain. A memoir is not like other
Show More
non-fiction, and I never feel like the person has to explain everything like in a dissertation (read: if you don't know what something is, look it up!)

I've had many questions about the ultra-orthodox Hasidim, and Feldman answered many of my questions. In fact, she hit the nail in the head with most. Aside from personal and familial drama, which is no better or worse than any other small, closed community, there is a lot of meat in Feldman's memoir. How come, I always wondered, they can even feed their million children when all the men have to do is to study all day? And how come they are anti-Israel? And how much do those hats cost? (I would have NEVER guessed those things cost so much!) And what's up with the wigs? And how do they justify Yiddish, this very new language, to be the sacred, pure language of the most correct way of being Jewish? (Oh, but to look for logic here is asking too much.) Feldman explains many of these mysteries. What's more is she goes on to describe the very many different levels of ultra-dom or ultra-ness that exists. To the outsider, Hasidim is Hasidim. Just like the gentiles who all look alike to Feldman with their shaved faces, the Hasidic all look the same to us. But oh, my, the internal rivalries, the levels of moderation and libealism, the generation differences... The all exists in Hasidim, too. And that means no matter how hard they try to keep the outside world out, it gets to them (otherwise there would not be any generational differences, and of course, compared to the liberal regular world, they have very few and slight ones.)

I didn't feel that Feldman was putting herself in a better light than she deserved. In fact, I can't say that I liked her much, as she seemed as judgmental, superior, and cold as some of the people she described. But to have reached the level of awareness as she did as a Satmar, to be able to critically evaluate the situation she was in from the inside as much as she did, she must be very smart and certainly, very different. In a way, being very different from the beginning must have really set her apart enough to allow her this point of view and awareness. Of course, it seems to have really damaged her in other ways.

So that brings me to the most interesting thing I found about what she talks about and what she doesn't: her mother, as what happened with her mother really sets her apart from all the other "normal" children from the beginning. I really expected her to explore more about what happened to her mother, and who her mother is now, but there is very little about this. In the beginning, she has lunch with her mom, and not much is revealed about anything. And towards the end, she obtains a bit of information about what happened to her mom, why she left the community, etc. And then I realized perhaps she actually doesn't know, she has not actually explored this yet, or maybe she never will (just because you left Hasidim, doesn't necessarily make you open-minded and all accepting of others...)

All in all, Feldman's book is the story of a slow and painful escape. I still found it to be a page turner. I would recommend to those who are curious about Hasidim and all the crazy things closed, isolated communities allow to happen, which is different than the crazy things open societies allow to happen.
Show Less
LibraryThing member lilibrarian
A memoir by a woman who left the Hasidic Jewish Satmar sect, telling of growing up in a closed, very orthodox religious community, and of the things that led her to leave.
LibraryThing member Judiex
UNORTHODOX
Deborah Feldman

The subtitle of UNORTHODOX, THE SCANDALOUS REJECTION OF MY HASIDIC ROOTS, sums up the rest of the book.
Following the divorce of her parents, author Deborah Feldman was raised by her grandparents in the Orthodox Satmar community in New York City. Her father was mentally
Show More
disabled. Her mother, originally from England, left the while Deborah was a small child partly because of the way she was treated by her husband’s family. Her grandfather was very strict and her grandmother, though she seemed to be a little more liberal, deferred to him. One of her aunts by marriage played a strong role in Deborah’s life.
The insular Satmar sect is called extreme Orthodox by many, Jews and non-Jews. The men wear high fur hats, the women wear wigs and many shave their hair (to prove they are even more pious to please G-d and prevent another Holocaust), the girls do not finish high school, and Yiddish is the common language. Many cannot speak English very well even though they were born here. They are anti-Israel because they believe only G-d can provide the state, not the Zionists.
From early childhood, Deborah had a strong yearning to learn, something that was not encouraged for Satmar girls. There was a fear that if they were well-educated, they would not be content to be traditional mothers and wives. She was considered rebellious and used to buy English language books, starting with THE CHOSEN and sneak them home, hiding them under her mattress. She fiercely longs for education and independence but is compelled to marry at age 17.
In one very funny episode, she remembers helping her grandmother make kreplach. She looked at the picture of a woman on the bottle of olive oil and the words extra virgin. She asked her grandmother, “What’s a virgin?” Her grandmother is shocked, asks her where she heard the word (Deborah, noticing the reaction said she didn’t know) and tells her little girls shouldn’t know that word. Deborah turns the bottle around so the offending word is hidden. If her grandmother had answered the question, Deborah would likely have been even more confused.
Observant Jews do not carry things outside their homes during Shabbat. In order to allow them to carry keys or push a baby carriage, many communities developed eivuvs, a system of wires enclosing a large area to make it qualify as the residential area. Some in the Satmar community wouldn’t accept the variance. Showing some liberalism, her grandfather tells her “A good rabbi is one who can find the loophole in the law that allows for flexibility. A rabbi who lacks sufficient knowledge of the Talmud will always lean toward the stricter side because he is unsure of his own ability to find the loopholes.” But, he adds, we don’t use it because others may think we are sinning.
I found contradictions as well as unanswered questions in the book. A week before her arranged marriage at age 17, she learns about sexual intercourse. She said she has no hole in her body that resembles what she is told. She has menstruated, has seen pregnant women, and new babies. Didn’t she ever wonder where they came from?
After her marriage, she goes to Sarah Lawrence. She has said they couldn’t afford maternity clothes for her and, later on, needed tires for their car. How could they afford collage expenses and day care for their son?
She eventually leaves the community and takes her son with her. One of her first acts is smoking a cigarette. Is she trying to emulate the Orthodox men?
She leaves a lot of unanswered questions about her mother and her father’s relationship with her as she grows up. What about her relationship with her ex-husband and his family.
She presents a couple paragraphs about an honor killing but I couldn’t find any information to back it up.
The book did provide some interesting information but I found it to be more of a collection of gripes.
Show Less
LibraryThing member JenniN
Author writes of her travails with orthodox Judaism and seeking to break the bonds of religious traditions. Did not quite ring true to me -- intentional exaggerations for publication purposes?
LibraryThing member kaulsu
It is LOC cataloged as non-fiction, so I will accept that at face value.

Although it often seems to be written to titillate, don't we find closed societies alluring? What did judges really wear under their robes before air conditioning? Do nuns really marry Christ? How do they consummate their vows?
Show More
Do they shave their heads under that wimple?

So when Feldman describes the purity cloths, or the ritual bathing for the husband's sake, we find it interesting in a National Geographic-esque way. Only when she writes of child abuse and a parent murdering his son for masturbating do the images of ignorance rise to the level of nausea. This in America TODAY? In the Twenty-first century?

A good book for book clubs.
Show Less
LibraryThing member Meggo
This is the story of Deborah Feldman, raised in an Orthodox Jewish household that forbade reading and was replete with cultural restrictions on women's movement, comportment and behaviour. An interesting look at a world I would never willingly join, the story is a satisfying one because Feldman
Show More
ultimately escapes the oppression of her upbringing to live as a modern and independent woman. I was filled with a certain sadness when reading this book, however, because this kind of gender-specific religious oppression is by no means over, or even rare.
Show Less
LibraryThing member bobbieharv
A fascinating glimpse into a very strict society that's incredibly restrictive toward women. I loved reading about all the rituals - just wish the second half, when she decided to leave, had been more fleshed out.
LibraryThing member fist
If you live in Antwerp, you are pretty familiar with this book's descriptions of Hasidim, the large fur hats, the veiled women and the prams (although I don't believe that the Hasidim of Brooklyn ride around on bicycles as much as their Antwerp brethren do). Consequently, I had observed or heared
Show More
about many of their customs, eg that married women shave their heads. Yet these insights into the customs of the Satmar Hasidim by the apostate author are pretty shocking. For a girl who was denied a standard education because of her gender, the author has a gift for observation and a strong, clear voice. She describes a community that is so focused on the observation of abstruse rules that they ignore or gloss over greater evils such as the oppression and torture of women (allegedly condoned by their God), but also child molestation (age limits are a bit murky in the Old Testament, so the Torah experts feel they can't condemn it) and even manslaughter. A horrifying "j'accuse".
Show Less
LibraryThing member cransell
Fascinating/horrifying/myopic in the way that you might expect a 25 year old who has lived her life in a very sheltered religious community to be. Worth reading if you are interested in the Satmar/Hasidism/strict religious communities.
LibraryThing member Rascalstar
A brave woman wrote this book and her spirit shines throughout. It takes exceptional courage to break out of the only life you've ever known, especially one as repressive to women as Hasidic Judaism seems to be. The story is a fascinating look inside this closed community where, like all
Show More
communities, there is both good and bad. The author knew instinctively that she couldn't thrive where she was planted, and she knew this at a young age.

The book is her journey from childhood to adulthood and how religious repression kept her from knowledge of even basic things. Women are kept mostly uneducated in Hasidic life, to such an extent that a young woman has no idea what to expect on her wedding night. Some women suffer from extreme lack of self esteem. Male children are taken into religious training at age 3.

I applaud the author for saving her son and herself and for her courage in the face of fear and the unknown. She's wise enough to understand that some parts of her background are valuable and yet she can move forward with a spirit of adventure and freedom. Every non-Hasidic reader will learn intimate details of a cloistered religious segment of the population.

The writing is straightforward and I would have liked to see more dialog. I liked the references and bits from other famous literary works.
Show Less
LibraryThing member MartinBodek
Deborah Feldman got dealt a pretty bad hand in life; not the worst hand imaginable - others have endured far, far worse - but a pretty bad one nonetheless.

I had a problem being straightforward about my review of her book because before having a chance to pick it up and see it for myself, I had
Show More
already been inundated with various public opinions of her book, her message, her subject matter, her exposes of private cultural matters and the like.

Still, I tried to bat all the biases out of my mind and did my best to view her book independent of outside influence. I found that the opinions of the many did not mirror my own. There seemed to be a begrudgingness the general public had to her material that I did not. Perhaps because I have a great deal of empathy for her, particularly sharing an extreme desire for enlightenment.

I read that she was ineloquent. I found this not to be so. True, because of her cultural bearing she speaks a bit like Yoda, but I find this forgivable because clearly, she tries so damn hard with her flowery ye olde linguistic tendencies.

I read that she lacked empathy for her community. Not so. She has loads of empathy for wherefrom she came, explaining all traditions to the best of her ability, no matter how much any such detail annoyed her to no end.

However, I did read that she lacked empathy for her husband and other family members. I found this to be true. Every significant family member in her life is described as monstrous in one degree or another, zeroing in on that facet of their personality. Her husband is painted as a dogma-spewing spineless opinion-less Hasido-robot set on autofuck. I would venture to think there's more to him than is reported in the book.

Interestingly, when she allows fuller descriptions of the human beings in her life, I find her reporting to be accurate. Why? Because I know several people in the book, know others who know several people in the book and have been in the company of of some as well. Her father is as described.

There is an untruthiness problem in the book, however, which raises my brow. It seems that for the sake of sensationalism, she took poetic license by either a) creating some obvious fabrications and b) sinning by ommission of facts.

To the first point, she describes Hasidic circle jerks, a homicide that would be an international-headlined sensation if it had a hint of truth to it, and too-coincidental numerological happenstance.

To the second point, for curious brevity, she leaves out massive mounds of information, like the true history of her schooling, the existence of a sibling, and for the love of God, how on EARTH did she manage to get custody of her son, when several others in her position have flatlined in the attempt? Inquiring minds need to know!

And this is what I mean by not having the worst hand imaginable. She did not get a 2, 7 offsuit. She got a 2, 6 suited and made a flush. Ultimately, this is a book about the quest for freedom, which she achieves. Good for her, she got what she wanted, at a young age, nonetheless. She has her son, she is free, she has a published book when others (like me) suffer years of rejection before either giving up or finally making it. (She knows how lucky she is in regards to her freedom and her son and her enlightenment, but I wonder if she knows how lucky she is with her book - yes, this is the jealous me talking).

She did break my heart though, as she a) told too many whoppers in her book and cannot attain full credibility. b) took up smoking (Why? What for? Ugh!) and c) concludes the book with a grammatically incorrect sentence. Most of all, I cannot look past that.
Show Less

Pages

272

ISBN

1439187002 / 9781439187005
Page: 0.6079 seconds