Today Deborah Feldman is a model of modern, independent young womanhood: the 25-year-old single mother of a 6-year-old boy, Yitzy, a recent graduate of Sarah Lawrence College, and a new author, with one memoir, “Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots,” just published and a second memoir and a novel on the way.
But as a child and teenager, she lived the kind of life that would not have been out of place for a girl born a century before. Williamsburg, Brooklyn at the turn of the millennium was, for some, the epicenter of the post-punk revival, artists lofts, angular haircuts and hipster culture. But Williamsburg is also the long-time home of the Satmar community, a sect of Hasidic Jews that formed two large settlements in Brooklyn and upstate New York shortly after the end of World War II.
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