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Unorthodox

The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots

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Unorthodox

By: Deborah Feldman, Cassandra Campbell
Narrated by: Rachel Botchan
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About this listen

 Now a Netflix original series!

Unorthodox is the bestselling memoir of a young Jewish woman’s escape from a religious sect, in the tradition of Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s Infidel and Carolyn Jessop’s 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 Deborah’s 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 path—for herself and her son—to happiness and freedom.

Remarkable and fascinating, this “sensitive and memorable coming-of-age story” (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette) is one you won’t be able to put down. Judaism Women Inspiring Heartfelt

Critic reviews

“A brave, riveting account... Unorthodox is harrowing, yet triumphant.”
— Jeannette Walls, New York Times bestselling author of The Glass Castle
“A sensitive 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
“[Feldman’s] 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 out—and contemplating, perhaps for the first time, their own escape.”
— The Huffington Post
“Riveting... extraordinary.”
— Marie Claire
All stars
Most relevant
The writing is overblown and flowery but I get that the author was young and had no experience as a writer at the time. The protagonist is conceited and delighted with herself and her abilities, and has no awareness of that, but I can't help suspecting that that is a product of the horrible life she led, one where women have no agency, are made to feel filthy at every pass and turn on each other like competing animals. Sort of like her fight back against that. The community strikes me as simply awful, but then it's the desperate and broken response to a truly horrific cultural and personal experience, that of the Holocaust. I feel that, as with any widespread oppression, the people were unforgiveably damaged; despite the unpleasant character of the survivor, to put one's head above the parapet and be counted, so to speak, is an act of great bravery...for that I applaud her. I just wish I could like her more. Still, the book is a page-turner - and to be able to do that at 23 or at any age is quite an achievement. I recommend it. And I'm glad so many are leaving this misogynistic community.

A brave but rather unlikeable author

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A really fascinating, well constructed story let down by the narrator who's squeaky voice suited the 12 year old character at the start but became irritating when reading as an adult.

Great novel, annoying narrator

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After watching tv show this book showed much more details and gets more in to her life story and opened my eyes on different community's and belives

An amazing book.

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So much hidden trauma, must be hard to break our of almost sect like restrictions. Great narrator, felt like the author.

Revealing story of closed community

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I listened to this over a few days while in lockdown. It took me out of myself into a different world. It’s much more complex and interesting a story than the film on Netflix which I saw first. A story of an inexorable movement towards being authentic. It’s raw and shocking and emotional. I wonder that these repressive societies can still exist, and am in awe of this woman who from childhood knew that she would never adapt. A universal story of an exodus.

Absorbing throughout.

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