36 pages • 1 hour read
Deborah FeldmanUnorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2012A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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BetaChapters 4-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 4 Summary
Deborah attends her first Simchas Torah festivities, where she and the other women of the Satmar community wait to watch the rabbi dance with the Torah. Although she is not interested in the event, she realizes that she “need[s] to be seen here. There isn’t a woman in Williamsburg who would pass up the chance to see the Satmar Rebbe’s annual dance” (120). She reveals that the main person she needs to be seen by is her high school peer, a popular girl named Miriam-Malka. As she leaves the event early, she considers how the rabbis in the community have become “celebrities of Hasidic culture,” with prestige and lavish lifestyles (124).
Deborah is now in high school and, although she enjoys the opportunities that come with her age, she still considers herself an outsider, both because she cannot speak Hebrew quickly enough for prayers and because she is excluded from playing games with her peers. As she looks out the school window onto the local library, she considers how she now has secretly moved almost completely to English, instead of Yiddish, as her main language. However, she resists the temptation to go into the library, less because it is forbidden and more because she is concerned about her precarious popularity if Miriam-Malka finds out. While Deborah daydreams through her classes in Yiddish, she shines in her English lessons, where she is the fastest reader in the class.
Most of her friends are older, and in a few years, they will all be married. She is one of two girls in her school that does not live with her parents, and she knows this will make it difficult for her to marry. One night, as she remarks on how she feels unloved by both the world and by God, a group of Black teenagers steals silver from a neighbor’s house. The community guardians catch one of the boys, and Deborah wonders why she feels more compassion for him than she does for her neighbor. Bubby reminds her how they can depend only on the people in their community.
Deborah notes many changes in her neighborhood. On September 11, 2001, she is let out of school early to find Zeidy purchasing both a secular newspaper and a radio to listen about the event. Fear surrounds the Satmar community: Zeidy is worried that Israel and the Jewish people will be blamed for the terrorist attack. Bubby thinks this event will lead to another Holocaust. Additionally, the influx of “hipsters” into Williamsburg is met with protests from many Satmar men who are worried about losing their community to outsiders.
Deborah is increasingly intrigued with the outside world, and one day she decides to venture into Manhattan on the subway. Finding solace in a Barnes & Noble bookstore, she buys Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, a book she compares to her life today. She finds solace in Elizabeth Bennet and sees the similarities between her community and Elizabeth’s regarding the importance of marriage. She is inspired by her final-year English teacher, Mrs. Berger, who challenges her with new ways of thinking and writing. After becoming the first student to receive an A from this teacher, Deborah prepares for a job as an English teacher at the school. She becomes friends with a former classmate, Mindy, who is also a teacher at the school. Like Deborah, Mindy is very independent and an avid reader. Together, they embark on mischievous adventures, including seeing their first live-action movie together. At the time, they are both shocked at the vividness of the cruelty in the movie, but upon reflection, Deborah remarks that many of those same atrocities occur in the Satmar community as well, but no one speaks of them.
Chapter 5 Summary
Now that Deborah is 17, Bubby and Zeidy are eager to find her a marriage match. She hopes for a more modern husband who will let her read books and go to the movies. As she prepares to meet the family of her potential match, she realizes that for the first time in her life, she is adorned with the new clothing and jewelry that she yearned for as a child. These gifts of fine clothing and accessories are only related to her presentation as a potential bride. Soon after, she visits the house of her potential match, Eli. They have a brief conversation alone together, and Deborah gives the customary nod of approval. Officially, the family congratulates the couple as engaged, and they set a wedding date of seven months later. Eli’s sister gets engaged soon after, but she warns Deborah that her brother will never love Deborah as much as he loves her. Now that Deborah is engaged, she notices that there is money for gifts, dresses, and parties. At her engagement party, they exchange a watch and a ring, and she admires how handsome he is.
Chapter 5 ends with a coffee date between Deborah and Mindy before Deborah marries. Deborah quietly predicts that Mindy will be married to a deeply religious man and, as she foreshadows, it turns out to be correct. Ultimately Mindy loses her independence, begins to bear many children, and Deborah is forbidden from seeing Mindy in the future.
Chapter 6 Summary
In her marriage class, Deborah learns what actions she must take to be a pure wife. One thing she must do is refrain from sexual intercourse during menstruation and for one week after the bleeding stops. Deborah is confused and overwhelmed by the amount she is supposed to learn. As part of her monthly schedule, she must go to the mikvah (a ritual bath) for cleansing. As she learns this information regarding the regulation of sexuality, she realizes that she has not seen herself fully naked before.
As she prepares for her new home, she spends time alone in the apartment reading forbidden books, including a novel about an Orthodox girl who left her community. Aunt Chaya has become more interested in her life, taking her shopping and signing her up for classes that prepare her for the emotional aspects of marriage. Deborah silently challenges the content of these classes. During their engagement, she is not allowed to see Eli; however, they follow the custom of frequently exchanging gifts. For Purim, Eli gives Deborah a large, ornate watch, about which Deborah remarks that the gift was not chosen for her but for a girl in general, which will make it easier to give it up later.
In the last marriage preparation session before the wedding, Deborah learns about the “passageway” that leads to her womb. She feels “angry and confused” because she did not know about its existence before now (212). She grapples with the concept that her body was designed for sex and reproduction, a reality that she was previously sheltered from.
At the mikvah before the wedding, an attendant tells her that she must not wear her robe when she is checked. This is contrary to what she learned in her wedding preparation courses, and although she is embarrassed, she tries not to let these emotions show through to the attendant. She learns later that an attendant from this mikvah was arrested for molesting brides, and she wonders that those young women never questioned what was happening as they believed they were submitting to God.
Aunt Chaya tells Deborah that her mother wants to come to the wedding. After mikvah, she realizes that her Aunt Chaya has taken the place of her mother, even though her intentions are just to make sure she follows the customs and behaves correctly. When she inquires about why her mother left the community, her aunt simply says she went crazy.
Chapters 4-6 Analysis
In this section, Deborah learns what it means to become a woman in her community. The timeline is short; young Satmar women are found matches and married only a few years after they begin to menstruate. With little preparation, Deborah is now overwhelmed with information regarding sexuality and the expectations for procreation; moreover, these are presented in relation to her impending wedding and duties as a wife as opposed to her development as an individual. Additionally, this section focuses on the theme of Pleasing God and Pleasing the Community. While Deborah feels the weight of religious and social expectations throughout her childhood, the pressure becomes almost unbearable when she becomes a wife. Her life soon centers on childbearing and childrearing (and all that they imply regarding sexuality and homemaking), and she feels completely unprepared for these experiences, expectations, and responsibilities. Although her upbringing in the Satmar community was rigorous in outlining religious and social duties, it did not provide her with the resources to feel confident as a woman, wife, and mother.
This section provides dates for the first time. We learn that Deborah’s account began in the 1990s, while 9/11 occurred during her high school years. The persistence of the Satmar tradition is juxtaposed against the landscape of a changing New York, namely the consequences of the terrorist attack and the influx of gentrifying “hipsters” into Brooklyn, both of which affect the largely self-contained Satmar community. The community’s traditions persist as the fear of the unknown brings uncertainty to Bubby, Zeidy, and other members of the community.
Deborah meets her soon-to-be husband, Eli, and enjoys the previously forbidden luxuries of lavish living. She realizes that the money she did not receive at a younger age was being saved for her marriage. She is attracted to Eli and has high hopes for him after their initial meeting; however, she is determined to maintain her independence. The foreshadowing of Mindy’s marriage at the end of Chapter 5 is a reminder that the traditions of the community can limit even the most independent woman. For all the similarities between Deborah and Mindy, marriage is where their stories diverge.
