Deborah Feldman | |
---|---|
![]() Feldman in 2017 | |
Born | New York City | August 17, 1986
Nationality | American German [1] |
Occupation | Author |
Notable work | Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots |
Children | 1 |
Website | deborahfeldman |
Deborah Feldman is an American-born German [1] writer living in Berlin. Her 2012 autobiography, Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots , tells the story of her escape from an ultra-Orthodox Jewish community in Brooklyn, New York, and was the basis of the 2020 Netflix miniseries Unorthodox .
Feldman grew up as a member of the Hasidic Satmar group in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York City. [2] She has written that her father was mentally impaired, and that her paternal family had arranged a marriage for him to her mother, whom Feldman described as an intelligent woman who was an outsider to the community because she was of German Jewish origin. Her mother was born in Manchester to refugees from Germany, and upon researching her mother's family, Feldman discovered that one of her mother's grandfathers was of non-Jewish (Catholic) German ancestry on his father's side and had attempted to integrate fully into Gentile society. [3] She was raised by her grandparents, Bobbi and Zeidy, both Holocaust survivors, [4] after her mother left the community and came out as lesbian, [5] and her mentally impaired father was unable to raise her on his own. Like all children in the community, Feldman was raised to be pious, spoke Yiddish, and was prohibited from going to the public library. Denied a typical American education, she hid books prohibited by the community under her bed. She entered an arranged marriage at the age of 17, and became a mother at 19. [4] [6]
Feldman said that the birth of her son was a turning point regarding staying in the Hasidic community: "I saw my future all mapped out... I freaked out at the knowledge that I have the responsibility and guilt of putting everything I saw as my oppression into an innocent person." In 2006, she and her husband moved out of Williamsburg, and, telling her husband she wanted to take business courses to supplement their income, she began to study literature at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville. [4]
Once in school, she "made a beeline" for a college degree to connect with the outside world. She began to speak out and "open my mind". She also began to wear jeans and high heels, breaking the strict Hasidic dress code. In 2006, she departed with her son, leaving her husband and cutting all ties with the Hasidic community. [7] She lived for two months with friends, and consulted with lawyers to make sure she did not lose custody of her son. As of 2012, Feldman had not seen or spoken to any of her family since her departure in 2006. [4]
Despite her differences with the Hasidic community, Feldman has said: "I am proud of being Jewish, because I think that's where my indomitable spirit comes from." [8]
In 2014, Feldman moved to Berlin, settling in the Neukölln district, where she continued to work as a writer. [9] Her first visit to the city had been deeply unsettling, given her family history and Berlin's Nazi past. But on her second visit, the city impressed her with its openness, its welcoming of refugees, and its many bookstores. After her first summer living there, she called the city her "secret paradise", and she resolved to stay. She quickly adapted to speaking and writing in German, due to its similarity with Yiddish, a West Germanic language. [10] Feldman has said that "one of the biggest draws of being in Germany is the fact that the language is so similar to my mother language [Yiddish] that I feel a sense of familiarity, and that is powerful". [3] After moving to Germany, Feldman became a German citizen in 2017; [1] asked by Arnon Grunberg whether she identifies as a German, she affirmed that "yes, I'm German". [3] She lives in Berlin with her German boyfriend, who is not Jewish. [3] Feldman has said that "I see Berlin as the capital of the West; to me, it's a city where everyone can find a home, where everyone can find freedom, it's the last bastion against oppression". [11]
Feldman started blogging, and in 2012, she published her autobiography, Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots , [12] which became a bestseller [13] and was translated into 30 languages, into Hebrew in 2013. [14] In 2014, she published Exodus: A Memoir. Her books have been translated into German and well received by German critics, which led to her appearing on various talk shows on German TV. [7] [15]
In 2017, she published Überbitten (roughly translated as "Reconcile"), a German-language expanded version of Exodus, which she wrote in collaboration with publisher Christian Ruzicska. Feldman said that writing in German was freeing because she could use her broader vocabulary of Yiddish terms that a German readership could understand. She characterized her writing style as old-fashioned, owing to the 18th-century version of Yiddish she grew up with. Überbitten was well received. The Swiss-German newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung called the book "a report on the long journey to the self, a literary survival guide, and a formidable philosophical-analytic confrontation with one's own history". [10]
Feldman is featured in the 2018 Swiss-German documentary #Female Pleasure . [16] The 2020 Netflix original miniseries Unorthodox is loosely based on her autobiography. [17] Netflix also produced a documentary, Making Unorthodox, that chronicles the creative process and filming, and discussed the differences between the book and the TV series. [18]
In November 2023, Feldman appeared along with German vice-chancellor Robert Habeck on the talk show Markus Lanz , where they debated the German response to the Israel-Hamas war. Feldman said that the only lesson from the Holocaust must be the unconditional defense of human rights for all. [19] [20] [21] Feldman criticized the postponed award ceremony for the Palestinian author Adania Shibli and her novel Minor Detail at the Frankfurt Book Fair 2023 and signed the open letter from 1200 intellectuals against it. [21]
Members of the Hasidic community have criticized Feldman, including in an anonymous blog titled "Deborah Feldman Exposed", which was dedicated to "exposing the lies and fabrications" in her story. [22] Jesse Kornbluth examined this criticism in a pair of articles in the Huffington Post which concluded, "There are claims in this book that Hasids have disputed. I can't tell what's true. But I'm sure of one thing: Men who can't live equally with women aren't worth living with. 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." [23] [24] Other journalists also investigated some of the incidents described in Feldman's memoir and found a number of exaggerations or discrepancies, including her account of her schooling, her relationships with various family members, and her description of an alleged murder and its supposed coverup by Haredi authorities. [25] [26] [27] In response to these criticisms, Feldman noted that the book carried a disclaimer stating that certain events had been compressed, consolidated or reordered. [28] Her book Exodus has drawn similar criticisms regarding the veracity of certain events. [29]
Klezmer is an instrumental musical tradition of the Ashkenazi Jews of Central and Eastern Europe. The essential elements of the tradition include dance tunes, ritual melodies, and virtuosic improvisations played for listening; these would have been played at weddings and other social functions. The musical genre incorporated elements of many other musical genres including Ottoman music, Baroque music, German and Slavic folk dances, and religious Jewish music. As the music arrived in the United States, it lost some of its traditional ritual elements and adopted elements of American big band and popular music. Among the European-born klezmers who popularized the genre in the United States in the 1910s and 1920s were Dave Tarras and Naftule Brandwein; they were followed by American-born musicians such as Max Epstein, Sid Beckerman and Ray Musiker.
Satmar is a Hasidic group founded in 1905 by Grand Rebbe Joel Teitelbaum (1887–1979), in the city of Szatmárnémeti, Hungary. The group is an offshoot of the Sighet Hasidic dynasty. Following World War II, it was re-established in New York.
A shtreimel is a fur hat worn by some Ashkenazi Jewish men, mainly members of Hasidic Judaism, on Shabbat and Jewish holidays and other festive occasions. In Jerusalem, the shtreimel is also worn by Litvak Jews. The shtreimel is generally worn after marriage, although it may be worn by boys after bar-mitzvah age in some communities.
Off the derech is a Yeshiva-English expression used to describe the state of a Jew who has left an Orthodox way of life or community, and whose new lifestyle is secular, non-Jewish, or of a non-Orthodox form of Judaism. In its broadest sense it can also include those changing to a milder form of Orthodoxy. Despite the term's pejorative and controversially dichotomic and definitive nature, it has become popular in use among Orthodox people, is found in mainstream literature, and has also been reclaimed by some OTD individuals.
Unorthodox may refer to:
Maria Schrader is a German actress, screenwriter, and director. She directed the award-winning 2007 film Love Life and the 2020 Netflix miniseries Unorthodox, for which she won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing for a Limited Series. She also starred in the German international hit TV series Deutschland 83 (2015), known for being the first German-language series broadcast on US television.
Anna Winger is an American writer, producer, screenwriter, and photographer who lives in Berlin, Germany. She is creator of the television dramas Deutschland 83,Deutschland 86,Deutschland 89, and Unorthodox. She is a co-writer of the limited series Transatlantic, produced for Netflix and aired in 2023.
Alexa Karolinski is a German writer, director and producer whose work includes music videos, commercials, film and television. She is the creator of the television drama Unorthodox (2020).
Naftuli Moster is an American activist. He is the founder and former executive director of Young Advocates for Fair Education (Yaffed), an advocacy organization dedicated to ensuring that students at Hasidic yeshivas in New York City be given a secular education. Moster was named in 2015 as one of the "Forward 50", in recognition of the impact in Jewish social activism and leadership.
Abby Chava Stein is an Israeli-American transgender author, rabbi, activist, blogger, model, and speaker. She is the first openly transgender woman raised in a Hasidic community, and is a direct descendant of Hasidic Judaism's founder, the Baal Shem Tov. In 2015, she founded one of the first support groups nationwide for trans people with an Orthodox Jewish background who have left Orthodox Judaism.
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Shira Haas is an Israeli actress. She initially gained national prominence for her roles in local film and television, winning two Israeli Ophir Awards out of five nominations since 2014. In 2020, she gained international acclaim for her role in the Netflix miniseries Unorthodox. For this performance, she was nominated for a Golden Globe Award and a Primetime Emmy Award. In the same year, Haas won the Tribeca Film Festival Award for Best International Actress for her performance in the Israeli drama film Asia (2020). She has since starred in the Netflix science fiction series Bodies (2023).
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Julia Haart, previously Talia Leibov, is an American fashion designer, entrepreneur, and author. She is the founder of +Body by Julia Haart, a body-positive, technologically advanced shapewear brand. Julia is the former chief executive officer (CEO) of Elite Model Management. She previously owned a namesake shoe collection, and was creative director at the Italian luxury house La Perla. Haart is also the subject and executive producer of the Netflix miniseries My Unorthodox Life, which described her 2013 decision to leave her Haredi community.
Unorthodox is a German drama television miniseries that debuted on Netflix on March 26, 2020. The first Netflix series to be primarily in Yiddish, it is inspired by Deborah Feldman's 2012 autobiography, Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots. The four-part miniseries was created and written by Anna Winger and Alexa Karolinski, and directed by Maria Schrader.
Jeff Wilbusch is an Israeli-German actor.
Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots is a 2012 memoir by Deborah Feldman. In the book, she documents her life in an ultra-religious Jewish community in Brooklyn, New York. The Netflix miniseries Unorthodox is loosely based on the book.
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This is a bibliography of literature treating the topic of criticism of Judaism as a religion, sorted by alphabetical order of titles.
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