Young woman writes of her escape from a Brooklyn Hasidic Jewish community.

[pnwmom]

This looks like a fascinating memoir of a woman caught up in religious fundamentalism.

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/hasidic-jew-runs-orthodox-roots-arranged-marriage-child/story?id=15540395#.T6Hf2-33AiE

At only 17, Deborah Feldman was unprepared for her arranged marriage to her orthodox Jewish husband Eli, a man she had only met for 30 minutes.

Like other young brides in the Hasidic tradition of Brooklyn, N.Y., she was whisked away to the "marriage teacher" and told about the "holy place inside each woman."

"I hear her describe a hallway with walls, leading to a little door, which opens to the womb, the 'mekor,' she calls it, 'the source'," writes Feldman. "I can't imagine where an entire system like that could be positioned."

Feldman, who had never even been allowed to look down there, had no idea she had a vagina and says she suddenly made the "shocking discovery" that she was designed for sex.

Now 25, Feldman has written a powerful memoir -- "Unorthodox: the Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots" -- about her escape in 2006 from the cloistered and misogynistic world of New York's Satmar Jews.

SNIP

[Drale]

1. Instead of beating peaceful protesters

those riot police should be raiding places like this girls home. Save some innocent brainwashed girls from religious slavery.

[freshwest]

2. Wow, going on right there in the Big Apple. That's something. Didn't attend public school, I guess.

[Odin2005]

3. I don't get why these cults are tolerated.

Yes, I said it, these groups are oppressive cults that commit human rights abuses.

[ZombieHorde]

4. Most cults are not this oppressive. You're insulting cults. nt

[Confusious]

13. No sarcasm tag

I think that was sarcasm. unless you say otherwise, it was.

[ZombieHorde]

14. I did not include a sarcasm tag because I was not being sarcastic.

Dangerous cults are extremely rare. Most cults are harmless.

[Zalatix]

21. The most dangerous cult of all runs the country.

It's called the Republican Party.

[siligut]

6. They are secretive

And who is going to stop them?

[siligut]

5. Communities like this one need to be exposed

I understand they formed after WWII, but believe that they continued to use it as a control mechanism, to keep people afraid of the outside world. Deborah sounds like an amazing woman.

[UnrepentantLiberal]

7. For a while I had a Hasidic boss in Lakewood, New Jersey.

The wigs, the dresses, the shoes... It was very strange. One guy got really pissed off at me for speaking to his wife when we were doing work at his house. Up to then, hard core fundamentalist Christians were the strangest people I'd been around. I finally quit. Being in that environment eight hours a day was weirding me out.

[pnwmom]

8. I think hardcore fundamentalists of every stripe are equally difficult. n/t

[UnrepentantLiberal]

9. Yup.

[TBF]

24. I agree - my husband has noted here in TX he has encountered religious

men who refuse to go to lunch with unmarried women if their wives are not along - these are business lunches in the middle of the day. We didn't grow up here so this sort of thing sticks out to us.

[Ron Obvious]

10. No idea she had a vagina?

I've read up some on these cults before and I agree they're vile (as well as in-bred and parasitic), but 17 years old and she never knew she had a vagina? She was told never to look "down there"? That's truly astonishing. That must be some powerful brainwashing they have to endure at an early age to overcome natural curiosity and rebellion like that. I have a hard time believing it's the norm.

[pnwmom]

12. No one ever told me to "look down there"!

I think many of us in earlier generations had to figure that out for ourselves. In fact, I can remember the first edition of Our Bodies, Ourselves. One of the groundbreaking things it did was tell women and girls to get a mirror and check themselves out.

What is unusual is that she's only 25 and so this happened to her only a few years ago.

[TheDebbieDee]

16. Nobody ever told me to look down there either..............

After I had two children (both girls) and got divorced, I finally read in a self-help book, don't remember which one, that I should take a mirror and have a look down there...........For whatever reason, that phrase, "Take a mirror and have a look down there.........." stuck with me.

I remember when my oldest daughter was about 11 or 12, she asked me something about sex or menstruation and I told her that all of a boy's parts were on the outside where they could be seen and easily examined. I also told her that most of a girl's parts were difficult to see or on the inside and that she should take the small hand mirror (that we kept in a basket on the tank of the toilet) and have a look down there.

For several weeks after that I noted that on entering the bathroom I found the hand mirror on the floor, on the sink, on top of the toilet paper.....I swear, she must have been having a look down there 5 times a day.

But I was delighted, and amused, that she was taking my advice about something.

[pnwmom]

18. Communications very different between me and my daughter, too

than they had been between me and my mother (much as I love her).

Thank goodness!

[Ron Obvious]

17. Now that you mention it...

Now that you mention it, I recall that bit of advice as well. We boys were lucky enough to have our genitalia external and it was therefore easier to discover how much fun could be had with it, I suppose.

I've sometimes wondered if the curious lack of removable shower heads in this country has something to do with a Puritan desire to keep the girls from finding out as well.

[alittlelark]

19. When you 'look down there' you see external sexual organs.

When we (as young women) 'look down there' we see some hair and the place we pee.

I didn't get it until I was 12 or so.


Try putting yourself in our shoes.

My upbringing was strict Catholic.

[Ron Obvious]

20. I understand

No, I understand; I spoke hastily-- no offence intended. I'm old enough to remember hearing the ground-breaking advice about using a mirror as well.

Still, though, you found out around the time you probably began puberty. I find it harder to understand a 17 year-old, after being explicitly told NOT to look down there, well not looking down there. Especially when she must have felt stirrings. Maybe I'm still being naive.

[alittlelark]

22. You are being naive. You do not understand how religious groups raise girls.

We know that there is something there that is 'bad'. We know that the blood is proof that it is bad. It is a scary thing.


Then I grew up and out of it because I went to public school.


Those that stay in 'the matrix' of religion and misogynistic control ..... all bets are off.

Will your Momma still love you? How can you face your father? Will they all KNOW if I explore? ..........

I can so easily see this happening.

[Ron Obvious]

23. True, it is alien to me.

I was lucky enough to be raised in a non-religious household and when I was discovered playing doctor with the girl next door around age 9 or so, both sets of parents just laughed it off. We were still allowed all the unsupervised time together we wanted after that.

Thank you for your perspective.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

30. A friend of my grandmother's had several children before

she learned that urine and babies didn't come out of the same opening.

I wish I were making this up.

[riderinthestorm]

11. She's so brave. K&R for more exposure. I haven't read the book but her story is very compelling nt

[Iris]

25. Some of this seems far-fetched.

She was allowed to attend college but couldn't go to the public library?

Also sounds a lot like the movie A Price Above Rubies starring Renne Zellweger.

http://www.reneezellweger.co/renee-zellweger/a-price-above-rubies/

[XemaSab]

26. I know fundies who are allowed all the online time they want

and are allowed to read whatever they want, but they're not allowed to drive and they're not allowed to go to school.

[Iris]

27. I'm still suspicious.

Last edited Thu May 3, 2012, 11:46 PM - Edit history (1)

Memoirs are a genre that I take with a grain of salt.

[BlueIris]

28. Sad story. I will have to watch out for this memoir. nt

[obamanut2012]

29. I just read this book last week

Very interesting.

It has, of course, been very controversial, and the author has received a lot of flack.

[Iris]

31. What are the controversies?

See my post a couple up. I find the story a little suspicious.

[obamanut2012]

32. There is a Facebook page set up to sabotage Amazon revews

And to attack the author as mentally ill and a liar. I personally find that controversial, and it makes me tend to believe Feldman's memoir.

[Iris]

33. Interesting.

That does add a different perspective.