Reviews tagging 'Child abuse'

Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots by Deborah Feldman

8 reviews

mmefish's review against another edition

emotional informative inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

4.5

It could be a 5 but I wanted to know more about how she actually left, how she was fighting for her son, how her family members reacted. Plus I did not appreciate the few misogynistic remarks the author decided to include for whatever reason.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Sexual assault, Pregnancy, Vomit, Emotional abuse, and Panic attacks/disorders

Moderate: Sexual harassment, Blood, Child death, Mental illness, Eating disorder, Medical content, Murder, and Sexual content

Minor: Child abuse and Pedophilia

issyd23's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring mysterious sad tense medium-paced

4.0

Very different from the Netflix show: more dark, cultish & sad. I thought it would be like Fiddler on the Roof but it was more Handmaids Tale 😢 These Hasids make the Amish look progressive 4📖

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Confinement, Eating disorder, Fatphobia, Gaslighting, Genocide, Gore, Hate crime, Homophobia, Infertility, Medical trauma, Mental illness, Misogyny, Murder, Panic attacks/disorders, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Pregnancy, Racism, Religious bigotry, Sexism, Blood, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual harassment, Sexual violence, Toxic relationship, War, Abandonment, Ableism, Antisemitism, Body horror, Body shaming, Bullying, Car accident, and Child abuse

madeleinebay's review against another edition

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Dementia, Emotional abuse, Pregnancy, Sexual violence, Gore, Car accident, Child abuse, Religious bigotry, Blood, Domestic abuse, Misogyny, Panic attacks/disorders, Rape, Sexism, Child death, and Sexual assault

Moderate: Pedophilia

greatexpectations77's review against another edition

challenging emotional hopeful reflective sad medium-paced

4.0

Really interesting, and I definitely applaud the author's bravery in writing this all down.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Car accident, Pregnancy, Religious bigotry, Sexual assault, and Toxic relationship

Moderate: Emotional abuse, Mental illness, Panic attacks/disorders, Child abuse, and Pedophilia

Minor: Excrement, Infidelity, Addiction, Bullying, Abandonment, Alcoholism, and Confinement

hannahrhian's review against another edition

challenging emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring sad fast-paced

4.5

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Antisemitism, Blood, Car accident, Child abuse, Death, Emotional abuse, Mental illness, Murder, Pregnancy, and Toxic relationship

bluejayreads's review against another edition

challenging emotional medium-paced

4.75

This is a story of living a strictly-regimented life in a strict religious sect, and the story of a girl growing up and realizing she didn't have to accept other people deciding she was lesser because she was female. 

Like Girl at the End of the World, the other leaving-a-strict-conservative-religion memoir I've read, I saw a lot of myself in this story. A large factor in me leaving religion I was raised in was also a slow realization that I deserved to be treated better than a baby-making bang mommy for my husband. There were enough differences between Deborah's experience of Satmar Hasidic Judaism and my experience of fundamentalist Christianity that I didn't relive my trauma with her, but I definitely related to many of her feelings and experiences. 

Since I know very little about Judaism, I don't know how many of the expectations, rules, and traditions Deborah details in this book are universal to Judaism, how many are Hasidic, and how many are specific to the Satmar sect, but I still found it all fascinating. Despite disagreeing with many of the rules and ultimately leaving the sect, this book doesn't disparage the practices and traditions detailed. She makes it clear that she wanted more than what the Satmar rules would allow her to do and to be happy she and her son needed to leave, but she doesn't claim that Judaism or even the Satmar sect is bad. She doesn't pass judgement on them at all, simply states them as factual happenings without moral or ethical judgement. Her follow-up memoir talks about her struggle for a personal Jewish identity, so she obviously isn't against being Jewish. 

This is a very good memoir. Personal, raw, and real, with information about a particular Jewish sect and Deborah's life within in. There's religious trauma, the struggles of marital sex when you learned you had a vagina one week before your wedding, the effects of surviving the Holocaust on the generations that came after, and a really compelling personal story. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Misogyny and Sexual content

Minor: Sexual assault and Child abuse

joy_b's review against another edition

emotional inspiring sad fast-paced

3.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse

shortcas's review against another edition

emotional hopeful inspiring reflective medium-paced

4.5

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Content Warnings

Minor: Child abuse, Sexual violence, and Religious bigotry