Luckily, I found Footsteps, an organization that assists people seeking to find their way in the secular world. This was something my yeshiva was not going to help me with. Without a high school diploma, I would need to get a GED, but, if you are under the age of 19, you need to provide a discharge letter from the last school you attended. Practically, going from Satmar to SAT prep was far from simple. The social and emotional pressures were only part of that struggle. Yet, my desire to live a life of individuality and openness drove me to pursue my goals despite the rejection from my friends and community. The choice to leave yeshiva and the community I grew up in was difficult, both emotionally and practically. In 2008, I returned to the United States hoping to enroll in college. At age 16 I went on to study at the Slabodka Yeshiva in Bnai Barak, Israel, for two years. After my bar mitzvah all secular education was discontinued, so the gap in my math, reading, and writing skills - already behind those of my secular peers - only widened. The secular education I received while attending Satmar Yeshiva was minimal and, by all measures, inadequate. Like Feldman, I also chose to leave the Satmar community in order to pursue an education and a life of my choosing. These black-and-white views obscure the nuances inherent in what it means to be both inside the community and to leave it in order to find a place in a world Feldman - and I - were taught to shun. For some reason, people either seem to romanticize the chasidic community - as the keepers of Judaism and having beautiful and supportive families - or to belittle it - seeing them as extremists who evade social responsibility and have more children than they can support. This conversation has to do with the struggles that people like Feldman face when they opt out of the chasidic lifestyle. Unfortunately, this debate is eclipsing a far more important conversation that we, the readers in general and the Jewish community in particular, should be having in response to this book. Recently, much of the focus has centered on whether some of Feldman’s claims are true or false.

Deborah Feldman’s book, “Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots,” has garnered significant media attention since its publication.

Pim and francie the golden bear days