Unorthodox by Deborah Feldman

 I was looking forward to this book as the Hasidic Community fascinates me.  I have seen a couple of documentaries online about male members of this ultra-strict sect leaving but nothing about women trying to break free has been committed to film.  I suspect this is because they are in hiding and fear repercussions from their family and the wider community.  The only information on women leaving have been text based with names changed.  So, based on that Ms Feldman is to be congratulated for coming forward to tell her story so boldly and honestly.

However, it did all get a bit Groundhog Day.  The same set pieces would be revisited again and again and I did find that this became a distraction from the story.  Whilst I am interested in the day to day life of a Hasidic Community the telling is necessarily biased and we will sadly never see an account of daily life from someone that is happy with their life within the community.  Instead the book focuses entirely on the negative emotions of the author towards the community, particularly after her marriage.

The book left me feeling conflicted but not with any additional information about Hasidic Judaism and that is something I was hoping for.  Certainly the information given tallies with other accounts I have read or seen but it did not bring anything new or unknown to the table.

This review has been a long time coming.  I actually read this book between the 30th July and 3rd August 2020 so my memory is a bit foggy about all the plot lines.  Fortunately, I have a notebook where I jot some initial thoughts on the book and an overall ranking so between the book blurb and that I did have a reasonable handle on what I thought at the time of reading.