Would Bubby tattle on me? I hide my books under the bed, and she hides hers in her lingerie, and once a year when Zeidy inspects the house for Passover, poking through our things, we hover anxiously, terrified of being found out. Or perhaps I have only imagined her complicity there is a chance this agreement is only one-sided. Maybe Bubby knows about them, but she won't say anything about mine if I don't say anything about hers. *** "From "UN"orthodox"" " I have secrets too. But it wasn't until she had a child at nineteen that Deborah realized more than just her own future was at stake, and that, regardless of the obstacles, she would have to forge a path-for herself and her son-to happiness and freedom.
As a result, she experienced debilitating anxiety that was exacerbated by the public shame of having failed to immediately consummate her marriage and thus serve her husband.
The tension between Deborah's desires and her responsibilities as a good Satmar girl grew more explosive until, at the age of seventeen, she found herself trapped in a sexually and emotionally dysfunctional marriage to a man she had met for only thirty minutes before they became engaged. She had no idea how to seize this dream that seemed to beckon to her from the skyscrapers of Manhattan, but she was determined to find a way. As she grew from an inquisitive little girl to an independent-minded young woman, stolen moments reading about the empowered literary characters of Jane Austen and Louisa May Alcott helped her to imagine an alternative way of life. Along with a rotating cast of aunts and uncles, they enforced customs with a relentless emphasis on rules that governed everything from what Deborah could wear and to whom she could speak, to what she was allowed to read. The child of a mentally disabled father and a mother who abandoned the community while her daughter was still a toddler, Deborah was raised by her strictly religious grandparents, Bubby and Zeidy. In this arresting memoir, Deborah Feldman reveals what life is like trapped within a religious tradition that values silence and suffering over individual freedoms. The Satmar sect of Hasidic Judaism is as mysterious as it is intriguing to outsiders. In the tradition of Ayaan Hirsi Ali's "Infidel "and Carolyn Jessop's "Escape, Unorthodox "is a captivating story about a young woman determined to live her own life at any cost. Print Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots
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