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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Speaking to BBC Radio 5 Live’s Emma Barnett, Deborah then revealed that her ex-husband left the community four years after she did, and lives a secular life married to a non-religious woman.

'He has two further children and both my son and I have a very good relationship with him', she said.

Explaining that he regularly visits them in Germany, she added: 'A few years back he wrote me a lovely letter where he expressed his appreciation for everything I had done for our child, and his gratitude for setting him on his own path.'  

Deborah with her Son

Deborah also relived the moment she decided to leave, recalling: 'The first year after my marriage was a very brutal year. 

'It starts with the wedding night which is the centre of the series, and continues with the intense scrutiny by my family, my husband's family, the Rabbi, the community, of my body, my sex life, constant pressure, and just the feeling of complete isolation and suffocation.'

A year after her marriage she fell pregnant, and she continued: 'As soon as I discovered I was pregnant it was like I woke up again. 

'I thought, "what is going to happen now, I will bring a child into this world and it will grow up the way I did. I will condemn it to the same unhappiness I have experienced, and suddenly it was clear to me that everything I should have wanted was absolutely wrong.'  

Admitting that she wasn't able to act in the way that character Etsy is shown doing in the new Netflix series, she continued: 'I stayed throughout my pregnancy, I was really terrified and depressed through it. 

'The first hour after giving birth, when I was holding my son in my hands was when I made that very concrete decision to leave. 

'It was a decision made in the throes of biological euphoria I guess. It was just these very stereotypical maternal instincts where you look down at your child, and you know you're ready to do everything it takes to fight for this child to have a better life.'

However it took Deborah three years of 'careful preparation' to be able to put that plan into place. 

In 2012 Deborah released an explosive memoir detailing her journey to break free from the strangling repression of life in a New York Orthodox Jewish household.

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

She tells how she left her ultra-conservative Satmar community in the Williamsburg neighbourhood of Brooklyn for a new life in Germany.

At just 17, Ms Feldman found herself in an arranged marriage.

She had known her husband for just thirty minutes before agreeing to taking the vow to spend her life with him, in his service.

The rabbi has the final word on sex and health - even inspecting underwear 'in a zip lock bag' to declare whether a woman's period is kosher or nonkosher.

In a note from the author, Ms Feldman explains the roots of Satmar Hasidism, a Jewish sect that is largely shielded from modern life - and one that she describes as a reaction to the atrocities of Holocaust.

In the book, she describes how she was forbidden from speaking in English and was told that 'impure languages' act as welcome mats 'put out for the devil.'

She suggests that at age 12, she was sexually assaulted by a cousin and was made to feel it was her problem: 'It’s obviously all your fault and not his, and you need to keep quiet about it,' she told the Post in a 2012 interview about the book. 

And this year Netflix made her book into series Unorthodox, a four-part series which tells the story of a young woman named Esther 'Esty' Shapiro, [Shira Haas] who decides to flee the Hasidic Jewish community in Williamsberg.

She flees to start a new life in Berlin away from her arranged marriage to Yanky, who tries to track her down and win her back.

The series describes itself as 'loosely based' on the true-story memoir Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection Of My Hasidic Roots by Deborah Feldman. 

Rising star Amit Rahav shot to fame playing Yanky Shapiro in the series, released this year.

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