unorthodox by deborah feldman

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UnorthodoThe Scandalous Rejection o My

Hasidic Roots

Deborah Feldman

Simon & Schuster New York London Toronto Sydney New Delhi



Simon & Schuster

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New York, NY 10020

Copyright © 2012 by Deborah Feldman

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereo in any

orm whatsoever. For inormation, address Simon & Schuster Subsidiary Rights Depart-ment, 1230 Avenue o the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition February 2012

SIMON & SCHUSTER and colophon are registered trademarks o Simon & Schuster, Inc.

All photographs courtesy o the author.

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Designed by Nancy Singer

Manuactured in the United States o America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library o Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Feldman, Deborah.

Unorthodo : the scandalous rejection o my Hasidic roots / Deborah Feldman.

p. cm.

1. Feldman, Deborah, 1986– 2. Jews—New York (State)—New York—Biography.

3. Hasidim—New York (State)—New York—Biography. 4. Hasidim—New York

(State)—New York—Social conditions. 5. New York (N.Y.)—Religion. I. Title.

F128.9.J5F525 2012

974.7'044092—dc22

[B] 2011001386

ISBN 978-1-4391-8700-5

ISBN 978-1-4391-8702-9 (ebook)



A Note rom the Author

Satu Mare (Hungarian or Saint Mary), or Satmar, in Yiddish, is a city on

the border o Hungary and Romania. So how did a Hasidic sect come to

be named ater a Christian saint? Well, on his mission to rescue promi-

nent Jews rom certain death during World War II, Hungarian Jewish

lawyer and journalist Rudol Kasztner saved the lie o the rabbi rom

that city. This rabbi later emigrated to America and amassed a large

ollowing o other survivors, orming a Hasidic sect that he named ater

his hometown. Other surviving rabbis ollowed suit, naming their ownsects ater the towns they had come rom in an eort to preserve the

memory o the shtetls and communities that had been wiped out in the

Holocaust.

Hasidic Jews in America eagerly returned to a heritage that had been

on the verge o disappearing, donning traditional dress and speaking only

in Yiddish, as their ancestors had done. Many deliberately opposed the

creation o the State o Israel, believing that the genocide o the Jews

had come as a punishment or assimilation and Zionism. Most impor-

tant, though, Hasidic Jews ocused on reproduction, wanting to replace

the many who had perished and to swell their ranks once more. To this

day, Hasidic communities continue to grow rapidly, in what is seen as the

ultimate revenge against Hitler.



The names and identifying characteristics of everyone in this

book have been changed. While all the incidents described in

this book are true, certain events have been compressed, con-

solidated, or reordered to protect the identities of the people

involved and ensure continuity of the narrative. All dialogue

is as close an approximation as possible to actual conversa-

tions that took place, to the best of my recollection.



Prologue

On the eve o my twenty-ourth birthday I interview my mother. We

meet at a vegetarian restaurant in Manhattan, one that announces itsel

as organic and arm-resh, and despite my recent penchant or all things

pork and shellsh, I am looking orward to the simplicity the meal prom-

ises. The waiter who serves us is conspicuously gentile-looking, with

scruy blond hair and big blue eyes. He treats us like royalty because we

are on the Upper East Side and are prepared to shell out a hundred bucks

or a lunch consisting largely o vegetables. I think it is ironic that hedoesn’t know that the two o us are outsiders, that he automatically takes

our eistence or granted. I never thought this day would come.

Beore we met, I told my mother that I had some questions or her.

Although we’ve spent more time together over the past year than we did

in all my teenage years put together, thus ar I’ve mostly avoided talking

about the past. Perhaps I did not want to know. Maybe I didn’t want to

nd out that whatever inormation had been ed to me about my motherwas wrong, or maybe I didn’t want to accept that it was right. Still, pub-

lishing my lie story calls or scrupulous honesty, and not just my own.

A year ago to this date I let the Hasidic community or good. I am

twenty-our and I still have my whole lie ahead o me. My son’s uture

is chock-ull o possibilities. I eel as i I have made it to the starting line

o a race just in time to hear the gun go o. Looking at my mother, I un-

derstand that there might be similarities between us, but the dierences

are more glaringly obvious. She was older when she let, and she didn’ttake me with her. Her journey speaks more o a struggle or security than



2 Deborah Feldman

happiness. Our dreams hover above us like clouds, and mine seem bigger

and fuer than her wispy strip o cirrus high in a winter sky.

As ar back as I can remember, I have always wanted everythingrom lie, everything it can possibly give me. This desire separates me

rom people who are willing to settle or less. I cannot even comprehend

how people’s desires can be small, their ambitions narrow and limited,

when the possibilities are so endless. I do not know my mother well

enough to understand her dreams; or all I know, they seem big and im-

portant to her, and I want to respect that. Surely, or all our dierences,

there is that thread o common ground, that choice we both made or

the better.

My mother was born and raised in a German Jewish community in

England. While her amily was religious, they were not Hasidic. A child

o divorce, she describes her young sel as troubled, awkward, and un-

happy. Her chances o marrying, let alone marrying well, were slim, she

tells me. The waiter puts a plate o polenta ries and some black beans in

ront o her, and she shoves her ork in a ry.

When the choice o marrying my ather came along, it seemed like adream, she says between bites. His amily was wealthy, and they were des-

perate to marry him o. He had siblings waiting or him to get engaged

so that they could start their own lives. He was twenty-our, unthinkably

old or a good Jewish boy, too old to be single. The older they get, the

less likely they are to be married o. Rachel, my mother, was my ather’s

last shot.

Everyone in my mother’s lie was thrilled or her, she remembers.

She would get to go to America! They were oering a beautiul, brand-

new apartment, ully urnished. They oered to pay or everything. She

would receive beautiul clothes and jewelry. There were many sisters-in-

law who were ecited to become her riends.

“So they were nice to you?” I ask, reerring to my aunts and uncles,

who, I remember, mostly looked down on me or reasons I could never

ully grasp.

“In the beginning, yes,” she says. “I was the new toy rom England,you know. The thin, pretty girl with the unny accent.”

She saved them all, the younger ones. They were spared the ate o



UNORTHODOx 3

getting older in their singlehood. In the beginning, they were grateul to

see their brother married o.

“I made him into a mensch,” my mother tells me. “I made sure healways looked neat. He couldn’t take care o himsel, but I did. I made

him look better; they didn’t have to be so ashamed o him anymore.”

Shame is all I can recall o my eelings or my ather. When I knew

him, he was always shabby and dirty, and his behavior was childlike and

inappropriate.

“What do you think o my ather now?” I ask. “What do you think is

wrong with him?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Delusional, I suppose. Mentally ill.”

“Really? You think it’s all that? You don’t think he was just plain

mentally retarded?”

“Well, he saw a psychiatrist once ater we were married, and the

psychiatrist told me he was pretty sure your ather had some sort o per-

sonality disorder, but there was no way to tell, because your ather reused

to cooperate with urther testing and never went back or treatment.”

“Well, I don’t know,” I say thoughtully. “Aunt Chaya told me oncethat he was diagnosed as a child, with retardation. She said his IQ was

sity-si. There’s not much you can do about that.”

“They didn’t even try, though,” my mother insists. “They could have

gotten him some treatment.”

I nod. “So in the beginning, they were nice to you. But what hap-

pened ater?” I remember my aunts talking about my mother behind her

back, saying hateul things.

“Well, ater the uss calmed down, they started to ignore me. They

would do things and leave me out o it. They looked down on me be-

cause I was rom a poor amily, and they had all married money and come

rom money and they lived dierent lives. Your ather couldn’t earn any

money, and neither could I, so your grandather supported us. But he was

stingy, counting out the bare minimum or groceries. He was very smart,

your zeide, but he didn’t understand people. He was out o touch with

reality.”I still eel a little sting when someone says something bad about my

amily, as i I have to deend them.



4 Deborah Feldman

“Your bubbe, on the other hand, she had respect or me, I could tell.

No one ever listened to her, and certainly she was more intelligent and

open-minded than anyone gave her credit or.”“Oh, I agree with that!” I’m thrilled to nd we have some common

ground, one amily member whom we both see the same way. “She was

like that to me too; she respected me even when everyone else thought

I was just troublesome.”

“Yes, well . . . she had no power, though.”

“True.”

So in the end she had nothing to cling to, my mother. No husband,

no amily, no home. In college, she would eist, would have purpose,

direction. You leave when there’s nothing let to stay or; you go where

you can be useul, where people accept you.

The waiter comes to the table holding a chocolate brownie with a

candle stuck in it. “Happy birthday to you . . . ,” he sings sotly, meeting

my eyes or a second. I look down, eeling my cheeks redden.

“Blow out the candle,” my mother urges, taking out her camera. I

want to laugh. I bet the waiter thinks that I’m just like every other birth-day girl going out with her mom, and that we do this every year. Would

anyone guess that my mother missed most o my birthdays growing up?

How can she be so quick to jump back into things? Does it eel natural to

her? It certainly doesn’t eel that way to me.

Ater both o us have devoured the brownie, she pauses and wipes her

mouth. She says that she wanted to take me with her, but she couldn’t.

She had no money. My ather’s amily threatened to make her lie miser-

able i she tried to take me away. Chaya, the oldest aunt, was the worst,

she says. “I would visit you and she would treat me like garbage, like I

wasn’t your mother, had never given birth to you. Who gave her the

right, when she wasn’t even blood?” Chaya married the amily’s oldest

son and immediately took control o everything, my mother recalls. She

always had to be the boss, arranging everything, asserting her opinions

everywhere.

And when my mother let my ather or good, Chaya took controlo me too. She decided that I would live with my grandparents, that I

would go to Satmar school, that I would marry a good Satmar boy rom a



UNORTHODOx 5

religious amily. It was Chaya who, in the end, taught me to take control

o my own lie, to become iron-sted like she was, and not let anyone else

orce me to be unhappy.It was Chaya who convinced Zeidy to talk to the matchmaker, I

learned, even though I had only just turned seventeen. In essence, she

was my matchmaker; she was the one who decided to whom I was to be

married. I’d like to hold her responsible or everything I went through

as a result, but I am too wise or that. I know the way o our world, and

the way people get swept along in the powerul current o our age-old

traditions.

August 2010

New York City

unorthodox by deborah feldman

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