Unorthodox is fascinating. I'm Jewish, but of course I'm nowhere near Feldman's Satmar world. So I see the book as a way into a culture I hate but that isn't really mine. (The difference is that because I'm Jewish, I do care enough about Satmar to hate them...)
Feldman is really, really young. I don't think she was much older than 25 when she wrote her memoir, and the important events only took place in the decade before that. I agree that perspective would have helped.
Somewhere I saw a roundtable discussion of the book by 5 rebels from Hasidism who blogged on the Internet. It was fascinating the kind of critiques they had. I remember that they were very harsh about the accusation of the father killing his son for masturbation. They pointed out that she hadn't seen it, and she didn't know the people involved. It was only a rumor, without enough evidence to publish. Some of the bloggers implied that they knew of the situation and that it didn't happen the way she said.
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Feldman is really, really young. I don't think she was much older than 25 when she wrote her memoir, and the important events only took place in the decade before that. I agree that perspective would have helped.
Somewhere I saw a roundtable discussion of the book by 5 rebels from Hasidism who blogged on the Internet. It was fascinating the kind of critiques they had. I remember that they were very harsh about the accusation of the father killing his son for masturbation. They pointed out that she hadn't seen it, and she didn't know the people involved. It was only a rumor, without enough evidence to publish. Some of the bloggers implied that they knew of the situation and that it didn't happen the way she said.