Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots
Deborah Feldman, 2012
Simon & Schuster
272 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781439187012
Summary
In the tradition of Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s Infidel and Carolyn Jessop’s Escape, Deborah Feldman's Unorthodox is a captivating story about a young woman determined to live her own life at any cost.
The Satmar sect of Hasidic Judaism is as mysterious as it is intriguing to outsiders. In this arresting memoir, Feldman reveals what life is like trapped within a religious tradition that values silence and suffering over individual freedoms.
The child of a mentally disabled father and a mother who abandoned the community while her daughter was still a toddler, Deborah was raised by her strictly religious grandparents, Bubby and Zeidy. Along with a rotating cast of aunts and uncles, they enforced customs with a relentless emphasis on rules that governed everything from what Deborah could wear and to whom she could speak, to what she was allowed to read.
As she grew from an inquisitive little girl to an independent-minded young woman, stolen moments reading about the empowered literary characters of Jane Austen and Louisa May Alcott helped her to imagine an alternative way of life. She had no idea how to seize this dream that seemed to beckon to her from the skyscrapers of Manhattan, but she was determined to find a way.
The tension between Deborah’s desires and her responsibilities as a good Satmar girl grew more explosive until, at the age of seventeen, she found herself trapped in a sexually and emotionally dysfunctional marriage to a man she had met for only thirty minutes before they became engaged. As a result, she experienced debilitating anxiety that was exacerbated by the public shame of having failed to immediately consummate her marriage and thus serve her husband.
But it wasn’t until she had a child at nineteen that Deborah realized more than just her own future was at stake, and that, regardless of the obstacles, she would have to forge a path—for herself and her son—to happiness and freedom. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Book Reviews
Born into the insular and exclusionary Hasidic community of Satmar in Brooklyn to a mentally disabled father and a mother who fled the sect, Feldman, as she recounts in this nicely written memoir, seemed doomed to be an outsider from the start. Raised by devout grandparents who forbade her to read in English, the ever-curious child craved books outside the synagogue teaching. Feldman’s spark of rebellion started with sneaking off to the library and hiding paperback novels under her bed. Her boldest childhood revolution: she buys an English translation of the Talmud, which would otherwise be kept from her, so that she might understand the prayers and stories that are the fabric of her existence. At 17, hoping to be free of the scrutiny and gossip of her circle, she enters into an arranged marriage with a man she meets once before the wedding. Instead, having received no sex education from a culture that promotes procreation and repression simultaneously, she and her husband are unable to consummate the relationship for a year. The absence of a sex life and failure to produce a child dominate her life, with her family and in-laws supplying constant pressure. She starts to experience panic attacks and the stirrings of her final break with being Hasidic. It’s when she finally does get pregnant and wants something more for her child that the full force of her uprising takes hold and she plots her escape. Feldman, who now attends Sarah Lawrence College, offers this engaging and at times gripping insight into Brooklyn’s Hasidic community.
Publishers Weekly
It's hard to imagine life in any strict religious community, and the Satmar Hasidim seem particularly remote from the experiences of many Americans. Raised in a Satmar Hasidim community in Brooklyn, Feldman gives us special insight into a closed and repressive world. Abandoned by her mother and married off at 17 to a man she had known for less than an hour, Feldman started taking classes at Sarah Lawrence College and soon determined that she had to leave the community, together with her young son. At first glance, her memoir is fresh and tart and quite absorbing.
Library Journal
In her debut memoir, Feldman recounts the many struggles endured while growing up within a particularly orthodox branch of Hasidic Judaism.... As she continued to question her faith, she soon recognized the tyrannical aspects of the traditions, the culmination of which led to an arranged marriage.... Having endured her second-class citizenship long enough, she took her child and fled to the outside world, basking in her newfound liberty. It was a bold move, but Feldman doesn't fully capture the significance of her departure. A remarkable tale told somewhat unremarkably.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. The heroines in the books Deborah read as a girl were her first inspirations, the first to make her consider her own potential outside of her community. Which literary characters have inspired you?
2. As a girl, with two absentee parents and an outspoken nature, Deborah was systematically made to feel different or “bad.” How did the structure of Satmar Hasidic culture make her feel such shame, and how did this shame serve to subjugate her?
3. When Deobrah learns that King David—a sainted historical figure who supposedly did no wrong—is a murderer and a hypocrite, she writes, “I am not aware at this moment that I have lost my innocence. I will realize it many years later.” What is the line between innocence and willful ignorance? How did Deborah’s ability and willingness to question authority and think for herself change the course of her life?
4. The cloistered Satmar community is located on the outskirts of New York City, one of the most racially, spiritually and culturally diverse places in America. How do aspects of the outside world enter Deborah’s consciousness, and how do you think these glimpses of life outside her insular community impacted her development?
5. Deborah writes of the various ways she was restricted and constrained by her religion, but her grandparents found solace in the strict Hasidic community after the Holocaust. Were there any positive aspects of her tightly knit sect?
6. How was Deborah’s life affected by gossip and the fear of scrutiny from her friends and neighbors? How have other people’s judgments and criticisms affected your own life?
7. How much were Deborah’s Bubby and her aunts responsible for the unhappiness in her life? How much free will did they have, given their cultural restrictions?
8. When it is time for Deborah to find a husband, her ordinarily stingy Zeidy starts spending money. How does this rampant materialism conflict with the community’s values of modesty and simplicity? How does this kind of materialism differ from and how is it similar to materialism in secular life?
9. Discuss your reaction to the fact that Deborah’s mother fled the community. How different do you think Deborah’s life would have been if her mother had not left?
10. Even though her marriage is arranged and she has very little say in the matter, Deborah originally views her impending nuptials as an opportunity for freedom. Was she naïve? Did her marriage with Eli constrain her even more than she already was?
11. Deborah’s description of going to the mikvah is one of the most harrowing of the book. How did her experience at the ritual baths expose the most glaring hypocrisies of her religion?
12. How did Deborah’s responsibilities shift when her son was born? What do you think ultimately led her to summon the courage to leave her community?
13. Deborah writes about the abuses that are allowed to run rampant in the Satmar community—from her own father’s untreated mental illness to pedophilia. From Deborah’s account of life in the Satmar Hasidic religion, do you think the community will ever be able to change or be reformed?
(Questions issued by publisher.)