The Book Was Better: Unorthodox
The Book Was Better: 5 Books to Read After Watching Unorthodox
You watched the movie, or the television show, or limited series. Now it is time to read the book.
1 - Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots by Deborah Feldman
The Book Was Better: 5 Books to Read After Watching Unorthodox
From the publisher:
Unorthodox is the bestselling memoir of a young Jewish woman’s escape from a religious sect, in the tradition of Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s Infidel and Carolyn Jessop’s Escape, featuring a new epilogue by the author.
As a member of the strictly religious Satmar sect of Hasidic Judaism, Deborah Feldman grew up under a code of relentlessly enforced customs governing everything from what she could wear and to whom she could speak to what she was allowed to read. Yet in spite of her repressive upbringing, Deborah grew into an independent-minded young woman whose stolen moments reading about the empowered literary characters of Jane Austen and Louisa May Alcott helped her to imagine an alternative way of life among the skyscrapers of Manhattan. Trapped as a teenager in a sexually and emotionally dysfunctional marriage to a man she barely knew, the tension between Deborah’s desires and her responsibilities as a good Satmar girl grew more explosive until she gave birth at nineteen and realized that, regardless of the obstacles, she would have to forge a path—for herself and her son—to happiness and freedom.
Remarkable and fascinating, this “sensitive and memorable coming-of-age story” (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette) is one you won’t be able to put down.
2 - Uncovered: How I Left Hasidic Life and Finally Came Home by Leah Lax
The Book Was Better: 5 Books to Read After Watching Unorthodox
From the publisher:
Uncovered is the first memoir to tell of a gay woman leaving the Hasidic fold. Told in understated, crystalline prose, Lax begins her story as a young teen leaving her liberal, secular home to become a Hasidic Jew, then plumbs the nuances of her arranged marriage, fundamentalist faith, and Hasidic motherhood, as her creative, sexual, and spiritual longings shimmer beneath the surface.
3 - Becoming Eve: My Journey from Ultra-Orthodox Rabbi to Transgender Woman by Abby Stein
The Book Was Better: 5 Books to Read After Watching Unorthodox
From the publisher:
The powerful coming-of-age story of an ultra-Orthodox child who was born to become a rabbinic leader and instead became a womanAbby Stein was raised in a Hasidic Jewish community in Brooklyn, isolated in a culture that lives according to the laws and practices of eighteenth-century Eastern Europe, speaking only Yiddish and Hebrew and shunning modern life. Stein was born as the first son in a dynastic rabbinical family, poised to become a leader of the next generation of Hasidic Jews.
But Abby felt certain at a young age that she was a girl. She suppressed her desire for a new body while looking for answers wherever she could find them, from forbidden religious texts to smuggled secular examinations of faith. Finally, she orchestrated a personal exodus from ultra-Orthodox manhood to mainstream femininity-a radical choice that forced her to leave her home, her family, her way of life.
Powerful in the truths it reveals about biology, culture, faith, and identity, Becoming Eve poses the enduring question: How far will you go to become the person you were meant to be?
4 - An Unorthodox Match: A Novel by Naomi Ragen
The Book Was Better: 5 Books to Read After Watching Unorthodox
From the publisher:
An Unorthodox Match is a powerful and moving novel of faith, love, and acceptance, from author Naomi Ragen, the international bestselling author of The Devil in Jerusalem.
California girl Lola has her life all set up: business degree, handsome fiancé, fast track career, when suddenly, without warning, everything tragically implodes. After years fruitlessly searching for love, marriage, and children, she decides to take the radical step of seeking spirituality and meaning far outside the parameters of modern life in the insular, ultraorthodox enclave of Boro Park, Brooklyn. There, fate brings her to the dysfunctional home of newly-widowed Jacob, a devout Torah scholar, whose life is also in turmoil, and whose small children are aching for the kindness of a womanly touch.
While her mother direly predicts she is ruining her life, enslaving herself to a community that is a misogynistic religious cult, Lola’s heart tells her something far more complicated. But it is the shocking and unexpected messages of her new community itself which will finally force her into a deeper understanding of the real choices she now faces and which will ultimately decide her fate.
5 - The Saturday Wife: A Novel by Naomi Ragen
The Book Was Better: 5 Books to Read After Watching Unorthodox
From the publisher:
Bestselling author Naomi Ragen mixes poignant storytelling and irreverent wit with her talent for creating finely drawn characters in this tale of a young Rabbi's wife who slowly begins to unravel under the incessant and unreasonable demands of her congregation, her faith, and her life.
Beautiful, blonde, materialistic Delilah Levy steps into a life she could have never imagined when in a moment of panic she decides to marry a sincere Rabbinical student. But the reality of becoming a paragon of virtue for a demanding and hypocritical congregation at an Orthodox synagogue in the suburbs leads sexy Delilah into a vortex of shocking choices which spiral out of control into a catastrophe which is as sadly believable as it is wildly amusing.
Told with immense warmth, fascinating insight, and wicked humor, The Saturday Wife depicts the pitched and often losing battle of all of us as we struggle to hold on to our faith and our values amid the often delicious temptations of the modern world.
