Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots

by Deborah Feldman

there was also a specific moment when I stopped believing in authority just for its own sake and started coming to my own conclusions about the world I lived in.

“Don’t you see, girls,” Mrs. Meizlish proclaims, “how easy it is to fall into that category of choteh umachteh es harabim, the sinner who makes others sin, the worst sinner of all, simply by failing to uphold the highest standards of modesty? Every time a man catches a glimpse of any part of your body that the Torah says should be covered, he is sinning. But worse, you have caused him to sin. It is you who will bear the responsibility of his sin on Judgment Day.”

They followed these leaders blindly.

We may have money, but we sure don’t spend it.

For a long time I wouldn’t be ready to accept that my worldview could be wrong, but I do not look back with shame at my ignorance.

“We will do and we will hear,” said the Jews at Mount Sinai, instead of the other way around, demonstrating a blind faith that Zeidy says we still have to be proud of.

If I wasn’t there when the agreement was made, why am I still obligated to follow all these rules?

Perhaps there are no plagues, only the fickleness of nature. Perhaps there are no consequences, just ugliness. Maybe punishment is something that only comes from people, not from God.

my ordinary name is hardly the stuff of nobility.)

With the unquestioning faith of so many people focused directly on him, he can’t help but take on a divine quality, yet I am awed not so much by the rabbi himself as by the jubilant crowd he commands, and the magnitude of their devotion. It makes me almost want to worship with them, just so I can be one of them and feel what they feel, but that man down there is too ordinary-looking to stir in me that absolute, unquestioning zeal.

Now the current rabbi’s sons are squabbling like children over a plastic throne. Where, I wonder, is the brotherly love that God commanded Jews to feel for each other, now, in this community that calls itself holy?

My moment of ambivalence is but a triviality in the face of the hard grid of cynicism that has already mapped out my consciousness.

I never want to be a rabbi’s wife. Not if it means being like my bubbe and always having to submit to my husband’s will. I am hungry for power, but not to lord over others; only to own myself.

Only the men’s prayers are regimented; only theirs count.

Yiddish is nothing but a hodgepodge of German, Polish, Russian, Hebrew, and other random dialects. Many of them were once considered as secular as English. How is it that Yiddish is suddenly the language of purity and righteousness?

I’ve already been corrupted; I’m just good at hiding it.

explored tentatively, unable to escape a crippling feeling of self-consciousness that comes with the absolute knowledge of being watched by God.

I feel as if the honor codes work to distance us from the people we love; by referring to them in the third person, I am ensuring that the age order comes before blood and personal ties.

don’t think this world is such a simple place, in which bad people have deformities that mark them as evil. That’s not how it works. Evil people look just like us.

To treat a problem is to evade the suffering that God felt you deserved.

Again, he laments, these kids don’t care for halacha; all they care about is that they have something to shout about.

Why would God suddenly stop performing miracles? Surely the same God who split the Red Sea and delivered manna in the desert didn’t suddenly lose his appetite for drama.

What is most obvious to me about Elizabeth’s thoughts and expressions is her innate frustration; perhaps she too is furious at being put in the humiliating position that women are always falling into, that inevitable role of the object to be chosen by the male, in whom all power rests.

I have this idea that if I could have had myself as a teacher when I was younger, it would have made all the difference, and that maybe somewhere out there is a girl like me, who wants to know more than she is allowed.

I would realize that the dangers that movie presented existed in my own community as well, only they were shrouded in secrecy and allowed to fester there. And I would come to the conclusion that a society that was honest about its perils was better than one that denied its citizens the knowledge and preparation needed to fend off their approach. If you are forced to confront your fears on a daily basis, they disintegrate, like illusions when viewed up close. Maybe being always protected made me more fearful, and I would later dip cautiously into the outside world, never allowing myself to be submerged completely, and always jerking back into the familiarity of my own life when my senses were overwhelmed. For years I would stand with a foot in each sphere, drawn to the exotic universe that lay on the other side of the portal, wrenched back by the warnings that sounded like alarm bells in my mind.

The most miraculous happenings are possible when things are still unknown. It is only when all has been decided that the excitement fades.

That phrase, what God wants, infuriated me. There is no desire outside human desire.

But really, the only differences that exist between men and women in our community are the ones that are imposed on us. Underneath it all, we are the same.

But perhaps what he meant by being able to handle me was not love but the power to make me bend to his wishes and conform to his world.

I read that the condition is most common in women who grow up in repressive religious environments. I begin to understand that years of hiding from my body has taught it to hide from me.

but I wonder, if it’s the best feeling in the world for him, why isn’t it for me? Why does it get to be so great for the man and so much work for the woman?

Hasidic men aren’t allowed to masturbate, Eli repeatedly tells me. As a result of this rule, he explains to me, I am obligated to satisfy him so that his sexual frustration doesn’t build up. If I refuse, I would be forcing him to sin, thereby carrying the burden of his wrongdoing.

Would God allow such a simple justice system to operate within his greater system of reward and punishment?

But the Torah doesn’t talk about what to do with a man who wants to have sex with children, it seems. It talks about men who have sex with other men, and men who have sex with animals. Those are the unforgivable sins. But there is nothing said about the sexual abuse of children.

When I voice my indignation at the dinner table, Eli tries to explain it to me. He says in the olden days people got married very young. There wasn’t really a clear distinction between a child and an adult the way there is today. Women were being married off at age nine, so was it really feasible to set up laws against cohabitation with children? There was no social taboo in place.

“If not me, then who? If not now, then when?”

“What is this world, that we only punish for trivialities like wearing a short skirt, but when someone breaks one of the Ten Commandments, we keep quiet?”

I find myself unable to comprehend that way of looking at oneself, as unable to supersede the accomplishments of one’s family.

It’s funny because the laws say that what’s between a man and wife has to be kept private, but everything always turns out to be a family matter.

I remember that our common scorn for outsiders brought us together and made us feel special in our difference.

We were all one big, holy, modesty-patrol gang.

I wonder at their desire to be a part of a religious community that’s so intolerant and oppressive.

I feel nothing at all. I wonder if that’s just me, unable to feel connected to anyone, even my flesh and blood.

It’s a lesson I never expected from this poem, the idea that one should value instinct over logic, emotion over intellect. But it makes sense now, looking back at my own childhood and the way I’ve always trusted my gut even in situations where logic clearly called for restraint. Every brave leap I’ve taken in life I can trace to a feeling, as opposed to a rational thought. In fact, the very reason I am here at Sarah Lawrence is an impulse I had months ago. True, I don’t know how long I will be able to stay, or what this education will afford me, but I’m trusting in the lessons of my own childhood and choosing not to rationalize my decision.

What a wonderful thing, I think, to take one’s masculinity so for granted that there is no need to fear being stripped of it. Are the lines that divide the men and women in my community in place because that fear has come to exist for some reason? Maybe, in a world where women outside the community have more freedom, masculinity is suddenly a thing that can be stripped.

The problem is, with each restriction lifted, I find another one lying just behind it. And I can’t help but be reminded all the time that there are some things I will never be able to experience.

On the outside, I keep kosher and dress modestly and pretend to care deeply about being a devout Hasidic woman. On the inside, I yearn to break free of every mold, to tear down every barrier ever erected to stop me from seeing, from knowing, from experiencing.

How appropriate that just as the very foundations of my faith are nearing total collapse, the foundations of my childhood home disintegrate as well.

I never understood why I had to perform the part of a daughter to a man who never tried to be my father.

I long for the same status symbols now as I did then, if only because I understand that those symbols command the kind of respect the world never seems to show me.