I finally was able to read this and what an eye opener. Deborah Feldman tells her story of growing up in a Satmar sect of a Hasidic family in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Her father is mentally unbalanced, and her mother had left when Deborah was young. After being raised by a strict aunt, Deborah pleaded to live with her grandparents and eventually her aunt agreed. Neither grandparent, though, is loving; her grandfather is a scholar who is only concerned with proper behavior, and her grandmother remains distant, Deborah feels, because she had lost her whole family in the concentration camps. Deborah grows up always feeling like she doesn’t fit in. Given her strong personality and belief system that the reader comes to discover, it is no wonder.
Without giving too much away, there are some chilling aspects she relates throughout her story. The part that really hit home was her description of the severe car accident she suffered due to her husband’s refusal to replace the nearly bald tires on the car she was driving. He claimed that he couldn’t afford it. Deborah reveals how lucky she was not to have died, due to the severity of the accident. The tire blew as she was driving on the Thruway, and her car flipped over several times on the Thruway. Deborah drives home the point again and again how women are continually looked down upon by the Hasidic men, including their own wives. Women who question or criticize the workings of the religious community are condemned and shunned.
The story does have a upbeat ending, but it is a sober look at life within a Hasidic community.
since who decides that she can’t bear the