Deborah Feldman's Story That WasTold In The Hit "Unorthodox" Reveals Ex-husband ALSO Left the Community- and They Now Have a 'great relationship'

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The woman behind the memoir that inspired Netflix hit Unorthodox has revealed that she now has a 'great relationship' with her ex-husband - a decade after she escaped their strict Jewish community in New York for Berlin.

In a new interview, Deborah Feldman, now 33, said her ex-husband left the community four years after she took the plunge, and even wrote her a letter to thank her for helping him turn his life around.

In 2012 Deborah released the explosive memoir In Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of my Hasidic Roots, recounting years 'trapped' in her Satmar community, the religious sect barring her from individual freedoms and, she says, promoting silence and suffering in their place. 

After entering an arranged marriage at the age of 17 and giving birth at 19, she was able to flee Brooklyn for Germany, aged 23, where she made a new life for herself. Her story was turned into hit Netflix drama Unorthodox, this year.

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The Liar Deborah Feldman Exposed!

She’s got some chutzpah!

She lied about her education, lied about her mother, lied about her sister, lied about her husband, when did she tell the truth?

A gal who ditched her hubby and ultra-Orthodox Satmar community in Brooklyn left behind a trail of broken hearts and hurt feelings to pen a controversial yarn.

Deborah Feldman, 25, says she was choked by an antiquated religion and trapped in a loveless marriage — but that’s news to her husband, Joel Feldman, who friends and family say is “shattered” by the damning memoir.

“She was crazy about this boy,” Feldman’s uncle, Izzy Berkowitz, 58, told The Post. “She was dying to get married.
“He did everything and anything for her, but she never appreciated anything no matter what he did,” Berkowitz insisted. “She lacked happiness. Nothing was good enough for her.”

Feldman, who’s been on a whirlwind publicity tour for “Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots” that’s included a powwow with Barbara Walters on “The View,” offers a clinical account of the couple’s marital intimacies.

“He feels betrayed,’ said an old friend of the jilted pop. “She wasn’t forced to marry him. They were madly in love.”

Pearl Engelman, 64, a neighbor of Feldman’s when she lived in Williamsburg, blasted the author.

Deborah Feldman's book of lies?

With allegations of communal cover-ups involving child sexual abuse dogging the haredi community over the past several years, it may not be much of a stretch for some readers to believe a gruesome story that appears in a new memoir about growing up in, and leaving, the Satmar community.

Hella Winston reports in the Jewish Week:
The story, recounted by Deborah Feldman in “Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots” (Simon and Schuster), involves the alleged mutilation and murder of a boy by his own father — supposedly for masturbating — and the subsequent cover-up of the crime by Hatzolah, the community’s volunteer ambulance service.


The only problem, however, is that based on information obtained by The Jewish Week, the seems not be true.…
Further, a death certificate obtained by The Jewish Week indicates that the death — which it noted occurred in a “storeroom” on a Friday afternoon in Kiryas Joel around the approximate date Feldman’s blog alleged — was ruled a suicide by coroner Thomas A. Murray, and lists the cause of death as “partial decapitation, severed carotid arteries due to circular saw.” The deceased’s age was listed as 20.


Several e-mails to Feldman and her publisher, Simon and Schuster, seeking comment did not receive a response.

Chassidishe Lady, Deborah Feldman, goes "off the derech" and writes her story in a book

After an uber-strict childhood and an arranged marriage at 17, Deborah Feldman decided she’d had enough

In her memoir, “Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots,” out Feb. 14, she chronicles her oppressive upbringing and arranged marriage.

At 23, emboldened by classes at Sarah Lawrence College, she left her husband and the community for good — taking her 3-year-old son with her.

Feldman recently discussed her experiences with The Post over (very nonkosher) crabcake sandwiches and Key lime tarts: “I think I love eating out more than most people,” she says, “because I was never allowed to do it. Women aren’t allowed to eat out.

She continues her interview and says:

My family started sending me hate mail, really bad. They want me to commit suicide. They’ve got my grave ready. [“R U ready to CROKE [sic]” reads one e-mail she shared with The Post. “We are most definitely going to rejoice in your misery,” another declares.]

So I’m very careful. My doorbell doesn’t have my name on it. But I think the book is a protection in this situation, because [my relatives] are terrified of having their actions become public. So it’s an insurance policy, in a way. There’s a reason why Hasidic people in New York get away with so much. There’s this sort of tacit arrangement: They don’t do anything the media can criticize.

Over the past 10 or 20 years [the Hasidic community] has gone from being extreme to being ultra-extreme. They’ve passed more laws from out of nowhere, limiting women — there’s a rule that women can’t be on the street after a certain hour. That was new when I was growing up. We hear all these stories about Muslim extremists; how is this any better? This is just another example of extreme fundamentalism.

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/entertainment/was_hasidic_jew_but_broke_free_IeRSVA4eX8ypg4Ne8cBdSK#ixzz1lhwnnqgX

Young NY Hasidic woman reboots life in secular Berlin in Netflix’s ‘Unorthodox’

Airing March 26, the unprecedented German-produced, based-on-true-life, mini-series in Yiddish is powered by Israeli actress Shira Haas and an explosive female creative team

On the first day of shooting for the new limited Netflix series “Unorthodox,” actress Shira Haas had her head shaved on camera. Her thick, long, light brown locks fell to the ground as she cried and smiled simultaneously.

“I was ready for it, and it was important for the story. But still, I was personally filled with the same mixed emotions Esty had,” Haas said of the  character she plays in this groundbreaking production.

The four-episode series, inspired by the 2012 memoir, “Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots,” by Deborah Feldman about leaving her ultra-Orthodox upbringing, begins streaming worldwide on March 26. It is the first Yiddish-language production ever to come out of Germany

By shaving her hair off and donning a wig, 18-year-old Esty assumes in good faith her prescribed role as a newly married woman in the insular Satmar community in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. She strives unsuccessfully to make her husband and extended family happy by getting pregnant. One miserable year later, she boldly runs away to Berlin, removes her wig, and starts to find her own voice — both figuratively and literally.

Shira Haas in Netflix’s ‘Unorthodox.’ (Anika Molnar/Netflix)

Although set in the Satmar community with its myriad religious laws, customs, and particular way of life, “Unorthodox” is essentially a universal coming of age story. Produced and written by Anna Winger and Alexa Karolinski, expertly directed by Maria Schrader, and performed by an excellent cast, the show will likely appeal to viewers of all backgrounds.

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Judge Freier responds to Netflix's 'Unorthodox' ....

Judge Ruchie (Rachel) Freier from Brooklyn New York is a Kings County Civil Court Judge, a volunteer paramedic and director of Ezras Nashim, the all women’s Basic Life Support First Response Agency.

Freier joined a special video online discussion and related to the Netflix "Unorthodox" mini-series, which brings the story of a Hasidic young woman from New York who decides to leave her family, home and way of life.

Judge Freier wrote about the series in an op-ed in the Satmar "Vos Is Neias" website.

"A good friend from the broader Jewish community who saw the movie called me and asked “Are all Hasidic marriages arranged and begin loveless?” Frieier writes, "This propelled me to watch it and determine its accuracy".

Freier noted that the production is fiction, but is based on a memoir written by Deborah Feldman with the same name.

"Perhaps it reflects the experience of one woman", Freier wrote, "and in doing so unwittingly or intentionally depicts Hasidic men as either naïve or shysters and women as subjugated, unloved, uneducated, unhappy and without opportunity".

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What Women's Media Needs to Know About Chassidic Women

Hi. I'm Chaya, and I am a Chassidic Jewish woman. I am also a media professional with a degree in Women's Studies from a large, very liberal university (magna cum laude, baby!).

In the past few days, I've been reading the backlash against "the asifa," a recent mass meeting of religious Jewish men meant to draw a few boundaries around Internet use in our homes (meaning religious Jewish homes; not your house).

Whenever religious Jews make a stink about some cultural issue, the media moves in on it with a bizarre kind of vengeance. Like yesterday, Katie J.M. Baker published an article on Jezebel about the event, in which she actually compared Jewish men to ants!

See: "While men in traditional Orthodox garb filed into Citi Field as steadily as a never-ending line of ants approaching an anthill…" Um, where have I seen Jews compard to insects before? Oh, wait, WWII.

As a resident of Brooklyn, the epicenter of all things hipster and the home of many, many clad-in-black religious Jews, I'd like to clarify a few things for all of you. Here are a few things you need to know about Chassidic women:

 1. We are not imprisoned. 

The last time I checked (which was right now), I am free to do whatever I want to do. Nobody is making me do anything. If I want to leave the community I live in, whether to go grocery shopping or to put on a pair of pants and go to a disco and snort coke, I can. Nobody is going to stop me. Would I wear a pair of skinny jeans and snort coke in a disco? No. Why?

2. We like ourselves the way we are. And most of us are happy.

Poor Deborah Feldman got the short end of the stick. She got a dysfunctional family and a crummy school. But listen: That happens everywhere. How many (non-Jewish or secular Jewish) friends of yours come from dysfunctional families and crappy schools and just couldn't wait to leave home? Did they represent your entire hometown? 

 We call becoming lax in religious observance and adopting a secular lifestyle "frying out." People fry out all the time. Most of us, though, feel like we are leading pretty rewarding lives.

Look at it this way: When your friends go to India to learn how to meditate and come home "leading spiritual lives" and suddenly won't go out for barbecue with you, you think it is cool. Your friend is leading a spiritual life. Spiritual lives involve boundaries and not just doing whatever your body feels like at that second. We lead spiritual lives. Leading a spiritual life is rewarding. 

3. We find our husbands attractive.

You know those guys with the long beards and the black coats who are always reading something in Hebrew on the train and you're kind of freaked out by them? So they're our husbands.

My husband has a very impressive beard. He wears a black suit, and a kippah and a black hat. He is also the most handsome, hot, attractive man in the entire world to me. Nobody forced me to marry him. My father did not trade me to him for a flock of sheep.

Fun fact: Jewish law prohibits marrying someone who you're not attracted to. Another fun fact: In the Jewish marriage contract, one of the conditions of marriage is that a husband is obligated to sexually satisfy his wife. If my husband would deny "conjugal rights" to me, that's grounds for divorce. Pretty effing progressive if you ask me.

 4. We have been happily shagging for millennia. Jews never had the concept of "original sin." 

Judaism is the original sex-positive culture. What? You heard me right. Y'all need "sex-positive Third wave feminism" to help you feel like having sex is OK. Jews bypassed the whole Christian idea that all sex, even in marriage, is a sin. And Protestant asceticism just never happened for us.

G-d likes it when a married Jewish couple has sex. Jews never got a message that sex is dirty. We think sex is good. It is so good that having it is actually a commandment. No, we cannot shag "anything that moves." No, we can't sleep around or have sex outside of marriage. But once you're married, sex is totally cool and awesome and G-d likes it.

I don't know who made up the dumb story about having sex through a sheet, but let's bury that old chestnut now. Having sex through a sheet is actually prohibited by Torah and we are commanded explicitly by G-d to get totally naked to shag. Just in case you're wondering.

 5. Mikveh is awesome. We don't go to the mikveh because we're "dirty." 

Holy moly! How many times have I heard feminists totally misread the Jewish practice of abstaining from sex during one's period and then immersing in a mikveh (a ritual bath)? It is hard to explain this one to people who grew up in Puritan America.

When you hear the word "impure," it has a totally different meaning than the meaning it has in the context of Torah. In Torah, you're dealing with states of being that are related to the service in the Beis HaMikdash (the Great Temple). It's called "ritual purity" and "ritual impurity." These states of being have nothing to do with being dirty or clean.  You could, in fact, not shower for days and roll in the mud and you'd still be "ritually pure."

Are you confused? You should be. We think about these things in a paradigm that is so not the dominant paradigm. 

All you need to know is that the practice of not touching your husband when you're on your period and then immersing in a mikveh is awesome. Most women's mikvehs are like spas. Picture the most beautiful spa you've ever been to, in a quiet all-girls safe space, and that's mikveh. 

 Incidentally, Orthodox Jewish women have one of the lowest rates of cervical and other reproductive cancers because of…wait for it…these customs. We do not have sex at times that our vaginas are vulnerable to infection (such as right after birth). Because we do internal checks for menstrual blood the week after we finish menstruating, the rate of early detection of (G-d forbid) tumors and cysts in the vagina is very high.

You think we are sexually repressed and afraid of our own bodies just because we dress modestly? Every single Chassidic woman you see sticks her own fingers in her own vagina at least twice a day for 7 days of the month. The chicks in my women's studies classes didn't even do that. 

 In conclusion…

When you slam Orthodox Jews because you think you're defending or somehow liberating the women of our communities, you're actually doing us a huge disservice. When you slam Jewish men, you're slamming us, too. Not in my name, gals.  

The next time you see a Jewish lady in a wig pushing a baby carriage through Brooklyn, I hope you won't see an imprisoned waif who is just waiting to be liberated. Cuz we're not like that. We're strong. We're invincible. And we make delicious kugel. L'chaim, chicas!

'Unorthodox Star' Shira Haas sings Hallelujah in previously unseen audition video

Unorthodox star Shira Haas shared her previously unseen audition video on Instagram on Wednesday as she took on the role of Esty Shapiro for the first time. 

Singing Leonard Cohen song, Hallelujah, it was clear to see why the 24-yeara-old was picked for the role for the Netflix four-parter. 

Unorthodox tells the story of a 19-year-old ultra-Orthodox Jewish woman who flees her arranged marriage and religious community in Williamsburg to start a new life in Berlin. 

'Thank you, everyone, for all the love. Hallelujah.'

And in fact, her onscreen estranged husband Amit Rahav, who plays Yanky Shapiro, wrote in the comments: 'I can listen to this forever.' 

Esty famously sings Mi Bon Siach in a particularly poignant scene in the series.

Shira previously recalled her shock and nerves at having to shave her head for the drama series. 

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New Netflix show follows ex-Charedi fashion designer Julia Haart Former Monsey Girl

 

Netflix’s stream of Orthodox Jewish-themed content isn’t stopping anytime soon.

The streaming giant is producing “My Unorthodox Life,” a documentary series about Julia Haart, a prominent US fashion designer raised Talia Leibov in an ultra-Orthodox home, Hello! magazine reported Wednesday.

Soon after marrying at 19, Leibov left her Monsey Jewish community and founded a successful luxury shoe company. In 2016, she became the creative director for the Italian luxury fashion brand La Perla and in 2019 became the CEO of the international Elite Model Management agency. She’s also known for helping design a dress made out of crystals for top model Kendal Jenner.

The Netflix description of the series reads:

Since taking the reins of a global talent empire, Haart has been on a mission to revolutionise the industry from the inside out – all while being a mother of four. Her children include a TikToker, an app designer, a lawyer, and a high schooler torn between two conflicting cultures, and Haart helps them reconcile their Orthodox upbringings with the modern world. My Unorthodox Life takes you on a journey through Julia Haart’s untamed, unpredictable, and unorthodox life.

Netflix’s series “Unorthodox,” based on Deborah Feldman’s memoir about leaving her ultra-Orthodox community in Brooklyn, was wildly successful and earned multiple award nominations. The platform has several other Orthodox-themed offerings, including “Shtisel” and the 2017 film “Menashe,” filmed in Yiddish in a Haredi neighborhood.

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Deborah Feldman on "The View" Video

Here see her plugging her book, video from Simon and Shuster, her publisher

Egyptian Writer speaks out on Whats Really Happening to Women in Arab Countries! Video

Mona Eltahawy

Deborah Feldman talks about women being oppressed in the Chassidic Circles,
 She has no clue what oppression really is ... see Video