No Orthodoxy

Deborah Feldman’s 2012 memoir, Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots, will be discussed by Memoirs & Coffee book group on Tuesday, Nov. 19, at 10:30 a.m.  Ms. Feldman’s memoir demonstrates just how transformative an exposure to literature can be.  Raised in the repressively strict religious community of the Satmar Hasidim, this Brooklyn author was bound in marriage at age seventeen to a man she did not know, but found the courage to change her life after secretly reading forbidden books, particularly those by Jane Austen and Louisa May Alcott.  Ms. Feldman’s self-emancipation also engendered an ongoing search for her own identity as a modern Jewish woman.