Deborah Feldman is an American-German writer living in Berlin, Germany. Her 2012 autobiography, , tells the story of her escape from an ultra-Orthodox community in Brooklyn, New York, and was the basis of the 2020 Netflix miniseries Unorthodox.
Early life
Feldman grew up as a member of the HasidicSatmar group in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York City. She was raised by her grandparents, both Holocaust survivors, since her mother had left the community, and her mentally impaired father wasn't able 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 tothe 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.
Separation from Hasidic community
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 Yonkers. 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 2010, she departed with her son, leaving her husband and cutting all ties with the Hasidic community. She lived for two months with friends, and consulted with lawyers to make sure she didn't lose custody of her son. As of 2012, Feldman had not seen or spoken to any of her family since 2006. 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."
In 2014, Feldman moved to Berlin, settling in the Neukölln district, where she continued to work as a writer. 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.
Career
Feldman started blogging, and in 2012, she published her autobiography, , which became a best-seller and was translated into Hebrew in 2013. Also 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. In 2016, she published Überbitten, 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, Neuer 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". Feldman is featured in the 2018 Swiss-German documentary #Female Pleasure. The 2020 Netflix original miniseries Unorthodox is loosely based on her autobiography. 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.
Criticism
Members of the Hasidic community have criticized Feldman, including in a blog titled, "Deborah Feldman Exposed", which was dedicated to "exposing the lies and fabrications" in her story. 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."
