Deborah feldman6/23/2023 ![]() ![]() She leaves her husband, takes her son, and starts a new life without the wigs, heavy clothes, and religious restrictions. After a car accident almost kills her, Feldman realizes what is most important to her. ![]() ![]() She learns to drive, grows out her once-shaved hair and attends Sarah Lawrence College. She is married off at seventeen to a man she meets once, and that’s when her rebellion begins. She describes her regret for lacking the “enlightenment” felt by the other girls in her school and community, and her struggles from a young age with the feeling that this life isn’t for her. She writes about her secret trips to the public library, hiding books under her mattress and hoping her grandfather doesn’t find out. Raised by her grandparents after being abandoned by her mother (who leaves Satmar and is no longer religious) and her mentally unstable father, Feldman attends Satmar schools, where only Yiddish is spoken and reading books in English is forbidden. Feldman describes the deeply religious environment in which she grew up, closed off from the rest of society and kept from any type of secular education and upbringing. Unorthodox is a memoir by Deborah Feldman, a former member of the Satmar community in Brooklyn. ![]()
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