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A review by literarycrushes
Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots by Deborah Feldman
4.0
Unorthodox, Deborah Feldman’s 2012 memoir, tells the story of her brave decision to turn away from everyone & everything she knew in order to find freedom. This book had been on my list for years and it did not disappoint. I was broadly unaware of the Hasidic community despite having passed through the few blocks of South Williamsburg that they inhabit hundreds of times. I was fascinated as I think many are, about how it was possible that this tiny community was able to section themselves off and exist so separately from the modern world. And right in the middle of Brooklyn!
Feldman’s story offers an unflinching account of how poorly she (and women in general) is treated as lesser than human in the name of religious tradition. Her own family life is somewhat irregular – she was raised by her grandparents after her mother was kicked out for being gay and her father was unfit to care for her due to a mental illness that goes largely unacknowledged and untreated within the community. At seventeen, she is set up (by a matchmaker) to be married to a boy she has never met. She hopes to find independence in her married life, but instead goes through a number of humiliating and very public trials as she and her husband are physically unable to consummate their marriage. Throughout her upbringing, she manages to find ways to explore different worlds through the books she smuggles from a faraway branch of the public library (English is thought to be poison to the soul and girls shouldn’t read anyway).
Though Feldman was traumatized by and ultimately rejects her upbringing she has a great empathy for her experience. Her story is heartbreaking and empowering. I wish there had been more focus on her actual experience of leaving, as the entire book was spent describing her life inside the community and then she basically stuffs her final decision into the last four pages. But I am excited to watch the Netflix adaptation, which judging by the trailer, appears to use the ending as a jumping off point before following Feldman into the new life she forges for herself in Berlin.
Feldman’s story offers an unflinching account of how poorly she (and women in general) is treated as lesser than human in the name of religious tradition. Her own family life is somewhat irregular – she was raised by her grandparents after her mother was kicked out for being gay and her father was unfit to care for her due to a mental illness that goes largely unacknowledged and untreated within the community. At seventeen, she is set up (by a matchmaker) to be married to a boy she has never met. She hopes to find independence in her married life, but instead goes through a number of humiliating and very public trials as she and her husband are physically unable to consummate their marriage. Throughout her upbringing, she manages to find ways to explore different worlds through the books she smuggles from a faraway branch of the public library (English is thought to be poison to the soul and girls shouldn’t read anyway).
Though Feldman was traumatized by and ultimately rejects her upbringing she has a great empathy for her experience. Her story is heartbreaking and empowering. I wish there had been more focus on her actual experience of leaving, as the entire book was spent describing her life inside the community and then she basically stuffs her final decision into the last four pages. But I am excited to watch the Netflix adaptation, which judging by the trailer, appears to use the ending as a jumping off point before following Feldman into the new life she forges for herself in Berlin.