Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots

Deborah and Eli decide to move out of Williamsburg to Airmont, a city outside of New York City. As the area is less urban, she convinces Eli to let her take driving lessons so she can get her license. Initially, she is worried since she has previously heard derogatory comments about female drivers. However, she passes her exam. With her new freedom, she drives more, even as she moves farther along in her pregnancy.

Deborah and Eli learn the baby is a boy, and Deborah decides to name him Yitzhak (“Yitzy”). Eli is happy about having a boy since he wants to have a better relationship with his son than he had with his father. Eli is interested in making the most of the nine months sexually and frequently initiates sex with, or requests masturbation from, Deborah.

In Deborah’s second trimester, Eli schedules an audience with a well-known Kabbalist, or mystic, Reb Chaim. Although Deborah is questioning her faith, she attends. He tells her that the baby will bring meaning to her life, and there is a secret surrounding the birth, and the number nine will be important to her. Deborah is skeptical; however, she learns that the mystic was correct about one thing: Deborah and Eli’s matchmaker felt she was underpaid and began to speak poorly of the families. This has brought bad luck to them.

During Deborah’s third trimester, Eli brings home gossip that a boy has been kicked out of the yeshiva because an old man was molesting him, and they do not want the molested boy around the other boys. After the old man disappears, members of the community find inappropriate pictures of children in his home. Deborah finds the molester’s lack of prosecution appalling. Eli and his friends discuss the molester, assuming it was his molestation as a child in a Nazi camp that led to his behavior. When Deborah challenges why there is no law against child molestation in the Talmud, Eli dismissively informs her that the age of marriage was so low in biblical times that it was not an issue. She feels enraged and ignored, particularly as Eli compares her negatively to other women who do not speak up. She worries about protecting her unborn child from the Hasidic world.

Eli’s brother wants to marry a girl from a Sephardic Jewish community, which is looked down upon because of a class difference. Eli and Deborah help convince his parents to allow the match, and the couple has a secret wedding. The night after the wedding, Deborah is violently ill. She is prescribed medication and bed rest for the baby. During this time, she learns of a horrific incident of a boy found with his penis cut off and his throat slit because he was masturbating. The community keeps the situation quiet, burying the boy and not issuing a death certificate. The murderer, most likely his father, is not set to be prosecuted.

Deborah learns at a doctor’s appointment that they need to induce labor to birth the baby. After, she struggles with postpartum pain as well as lactation. Weeks after the birth, Eli urges Deborah to begin attending the mikvah again so they can resume intercourse. Deborah is overwhelmed by the experience of pregnancy and childbirth but acquiesces. After receiving the approval from their doctors, they begin to have intercourse, but shortly after Deborah contracts an infection. The doctor informs the couple it is from Eli’s side and gives him medication. Deborah realizes that he has probably been unfaithful, but she does not care.

In her early days of motherhood, Deborah feels self-conscious about her detachment from her baby, particularly worried that she is too “damaged by [her] childhood experiences” to feel affection and love (298). She considers leaving Eli and the Hasidic community. She recalls the moments as a child when she felt bonded with her community as she and other children chanted taunting phrases to women who were not dressed modestly. When a child remarks on her gentile-looking appearance one day in Williamsburg, she realizes that she is also an outsider now. She has secretly stopped attending mikvah and instead drives to other places and reads in the car. She still has sex with her husband, despite the fact she no longer attends mikvah, and even though she knows they don’t love each other.

She watches a documentary one day about Orthodox Jews who struggle to reconcile faith and sexuality. She recognizes her mother, Rachel, in the documentary talking about her homosexuality, and Deborah wonders if this is what Aunt Chaya meant about her mother being “crazy.” She decides to send Rachel flowers, as a form of reaching out even though Deborah is not ready to speak to her yet.

A few months later, Deborah applies to university-level adult education programs and is accepted into the writing program at Sarah Lawrence College. She lies to Eli, telling him that she will attend business school, but he is more concerned about whether she can maintain her household duties.

Although her relationship with her son is growing stronger, her marriage is disintegrating. She dreads their weekly intercourse, and Eli grows angrier. As she tries to do toilet training with Yitzy, she sees Eli taking his anger out on their son. At this point, she decides to remove Eli from the childrearing process.

Slowly, Deborah participates in activities that were previously taboo: she paints her nails, goes to movies, and even buys jeans and secretly wears them to class. Her new friend from school, Polly, takes her to a high-end restaurant, where she tries non-kosher foods, including pork, and is surprised that she is not immediately sick, as she was told she would be. She announces to Polly that night that she does not want to be Hasidic anymore.

She starts a blog under the pseudonym “Hasidic Feminist.” Deborah is surprised at the blog’s popularity and its role in starting conversations and debates among women who have endured similar situations, such as the inability to consummate their marriages.

Deborah and Eli visit Bubby and Zeidy’s home for Purim, which she foreshadows is her last time. The visit is disappointing: the house is crumbling, her grandparents are not like she remembers, and the family largely ignores her. She believes she is making the right decision to leave her community, since the good parts of her childhood are gone, and nothing is as she remembers.

As she listens to her wealthy, older female classmates talk about their problems, she begins to consider her life as a single mom, how she will support herself, where she will live, and what she wants to be. Polly helps her find a literary agent, whom she meets with to find out how to get a book published. At this point, she is ready to leave her old life, but she waits for a final moment to push her over the edge.

Late one evening, Deborah is driving home and gets a flat tire. The car flips over, and she is stuck upside down. She maneuvers herself out of the car and is sent to the hospital. This accident happens at midnight on September 9, 2009, and Deborah recalls the Kabbalist mystic told her about the special number nine. She is now “no longer uncertain” and ready to leave her old life (334). Before she leaves, she sees a religious marriage counselor with Eli. When the counselor says the couple’s problems are serious, Eli suggests a divorce, and Deborah agrees. She leaves, selling most of her old belongings and moving into a new apartment with Yitzy without giving people her address or number. She feels a new bond with her son now they are alone together, and she teaches him English. Instead of forgetting her past, she chooses to relish her experiences and is excited about her future.

In the Epilogue, Feldman addresses the backlash she received from the ultra-Orthodox community after the book’s publication. She maintains that she is unapologetic and that she cares “deeply about the rights of women and children, and [is] keenly aware of how those rights can be violated in the community” (341). Overall, she is glad she published the book, as it was an empowering moment for her. She also manages, despite the odds, to win custody of her son in the divorce proceedings. She leaves New York to find a new home and community as a single mother but eventually returns, feeling confident in her ability to “navigate secular society” (344).

In the Afterword, Feldman recognizes that the discovery of her authentic self took years of work. She now lives in Berlin, Germany, where she moved five years prior. She commends the creation of the Netflix series Unorthodox based on her book. She notes that “the greatest triumph of Unorthodox-the-series is its ability to serve as a template for a journey that many have traveled and yet for which there is still no detailed map” (349).