Published in 2012
272 pages
Deborah Feldman was born and raised in the Hasidic community of Satmar in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Her marriage was arranged at the age of 17, and her son was born two years later. At the age of 25 she published the New York Times Bestselling memoir, Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots. She currently lives with her son in Berlin, Germany.
What is this book about?
The instant New York Times bestselling memoir of a young Jewish woman’s escape from a religious sect, in the tradition of Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s Infidel and Carolyn Jessop’s Escape, featuring a new epilogue by the author.
As a member of the strictly religious Satmar sect of Hasidic Judaism, Deborah Feldman grew up under a code of relentlessly enforced customs governing everything from what she could wear and to whom she could speak to what she was allowed to read. It was stolen moments spent with the empowered literary characters of Jane Austen and Louisa May Alcott that helped her to imagine an alternative way of life. Trapped as a teenager in a sexually and emotionally dysfunctional marriage to a man she barely knew, the tension between Deborah’s desires and her responsibilities as a good Satmar girl grew more explosive until she gave birth at nineteen and realized that, for the sake of herself and her son, she had to escape.
