Deborah Feldman is one of the writers whose memoir “UnOrthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots” became a bestseller in a short time. Today a series has been created on Netflix based on her book, but how much is real and how much is not from the UnOrthodox series about Deborah Feldman?
Who is Deborah Feldman?
Deborah Feldman already existed before the famed UnOrthodox series, both in real life and in literature, publishing her New York Times best-selling memoir at age 25: “UnOrthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots », which in Spanish would be something like «Unorthodox: The scandalous rejection of my Hasidic roots«. This book has been translated into multiple languages: Hebrew, Polish, Dutch, Danish, Italian, German… And it is expected that the number of languages will increase soon.
The true story of Deborah Feldman
Deborah Feldman was born in 1986 to a Brooklyn’s strict Hasidic community, considered as a religious sect where individual freedoms disappear and, as she describes, silence was valued, oppression and repression were strengthened. The outside world does not exist or is not well seen, since they are separated from the rest of society to maintain their culture, their way of seeing life and their mother tongue (Yiddish).
If you are looking for information, you will be surprised that the majority speaks of the male and that the woman occupies little space in what is described, and that is that the woman occupies a role of mother and submissive wife. Some important ideas to be able to understand the real life of Deborah Feldman within this Hasidic community and, from there, understand the greatness of her life and her memories are:
- It is forbidden to go to university
- You don’t choose your wife or your husband, it is chosen by the father and the rabbi.
- They cannot show their hair to anyone except their husband in privacy. It is customary to shave one’s hair after the wedding and wear a wig (sheitel) since they would no longer break the Jewish law of not showing their hair.
- It cannot be sung in front of a man, as it is an incitement to sin, but it can be sung in front of women.
- There is a sidewalk for husbands and another sidewalk for wives with children.
- Men cannot look directly at women or they might fall under the influence of sin.
- Women have to dress simply and can only have their hands and face uncovered.
- During the week of menstruation, the woman cannot touch her husband, they sleep separately, and to go back to sleep with him she has to carry out ritual purification baths (mikva) to know that she is completely clean.
- Women and men do not share means of transportation.
- Women do not usually leave the neighborhood of the Hasidic community.
- Depending on the Hasidic community in question, the work dynamics may vary. In Brooklyn, women work outside the home and men study Torah.
Deborah describes her life within the Satmar sect of Hasidic Judaism as a struggle for curiosity, not only her own discovery of herself as a woman, but also the curiosity that led her outside the strict rules of indoctrination. She describes how her life was governed by daily restrictions, restrictions that curtailed their personal freedomsFrom who he could talk to, what he could read to the very development of his identity was controlled.
In a recent interview with The New York Times, he talks about how it was women who exerted more pressure and oppression. I quote «Why did the ones who hurt me the most were my aunt, mother-in-law, teachers, mikvah attendant, Kallah’s teacher and sex therapist? Why did I always feel hurt and betrayed by women?
She managed to secretly read books that broke the barriers of a doctrine that distanced her from her own opportunity to choose, that spoke of the empowerment of women, of other values for them. Among those books were Jane Austen and Louisa May Alcottwho gave him a different view of the world and of women.
According to the customs already mentioned above, it was married at 17 with a man she had seen only 30 minutes before and who could see how different she was. A man with whom she could not consummate her marriage for a whole year, due to the anxiety that she suffered from and that produced somatic symptoms, which was considered as some public shame for not being able to serve her husband.
There came a time when Deborah Feldman couldn’t take it anymore. Trapped in a marriage that didn’t work out in any way, in a community where she had no space other than being a submissive woman or a mother, with an outward-looking gaze and an inner struggle with the ultra-Orthodox community, all of this , led him to make the decision to abandon its origin to seek itself. It was in 2009, when she was only 23 years old, she broke with everything in order to seek a better life for herself and her son, away from oppression and an isolated education.
In 2012, he published the bestseller UnOrthodox, his memoir, and a few years later, he wrote “exodus” (Exodus). In this book he talks about an internal journey -also external, through different areas of the US and culminating in Europe- in which he redefines his own ties with family and religion, a construction of his identity, the breaking of certain ties to be able to be herself, to be able to accept herself and find her own authenticity.
Since 2014 Deborah lives in berlin (Germany) with her son and is writing her first novel in German.
Deborah Feldman and the UnOrthodox series
The UnOrthodox series is based on Deborah Feldman’s memoir, in which we will be able to meet Esther Shapiro, through whom we will delve into a story of self-improvement, of the search for individual freedom in an environment in which seem like an impossible task. We find a series that aims to be one of the most viewed and intimate this season.
We leave you the trailer in Spanish:
Another article that may interest you is: