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.Īs 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. 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. In this arresting memoir, Feldman reveals what life is like trapped within a religious tradition that values silence and suffering over individual freedoms. The Satmar sect of Hasidic Judaism is as mysterious as it is intriguing to outsiders. 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. Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots
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