Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots

(Paperback, Media Tie-In)

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Now a Netflix original series!

Unorthodox is the bestselling memoir of a young Jewish womans escape from a religious sect, in the tradition of Ayaan Hirsi Alis Infidel and Carolyn Jessops 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. Yet in spite of her repressive upbringing, Deborah grew into an independent-minded young woman whose stolen moments reading about the empowered literary characters of Jane Austen and Louisa May Alcott helped her to imagine an alternative way of life among the skyscrapers of Manhattan. Trapped as a teenager in a sexually and emotionally dysfunctional marriage to a man she barely knew, the tension between Deborahs desires and her responsibilities as a good Satmar girl grew more explosive until she gave birth at nineteen and realized that, regardless of the obstacles, she would have to forge a pathfor herself and her sonto happiness and freedom.

Remarkable and fascinating, this sensitive and memorable coming-of-age story (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette) is one you wont be able to put down.

Reviews

A brave, riveting account... Unorthodox is harrowing, yet triumphant.
Jeannette Walls, New York Timesbestselling author of The Glass Castle
Asensitive and memorable coming-of-age story... Imagine Frank McCourt as a Jewish virgin, and you've got Unorthodox in a nutshell.
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Compulsively readable, Unorthodox relates a unique coming-of-age story that manages to speak personally to anyone who has ever felt like an outsider in her own life.
School Library Journal
It's one of those books you can't put down.
Joan Rivers, in The New York Post
An unprecedented view into a Hasidic community that few outsiders ever experience.
Minneapolis Star-Tribune
[Feldmans] matter-of-fact style masks some penetrating insights.
The New York Times
Eloquent, appealing, and just emotional enough... No doubt girls all over Brooklyn are buying this book, hiding it under their mattresses, reading it after lights outand contemplating, perhaps for the first time, their own escape.
The Huffington Post
Riveting... extraordinary.
Marie Claire

Author Bio

Deborah Feldman was raised in the Satmar Hasidic community in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, New York. She lives in Berlin with her son.