Exodus, Revisited: My Unorthodox Journey to Berlin

Produktdetails

Verlag

PLUME

Erschienen

2021

Sprache

English

Seiten

368

Infos

368 Seiten
199 mm x 130 mm

ISBN

978-0-593-18526-1

Besprechung

Praise for Exodus, Revisited

Exodus, Revisited is intriguing and intellectually satisfying raises hard questions that are important to many people. The Washington Post

Riveting.... Not only is the book beautifully written, but it deals with some of the most profound human emotions: longing to know one s origins; anger at injustice; and romantic and parental love.... A barebones description of the storyline doesn t even begin to do justice to this magnificent piece of literature, which will stand the test of time.... [A] captivating memoir that will find a wide audience. Library Reads (starred)

An inspiring story of commitment to oneself follows a woman seeking true "home" after fleeing a repressive religious sect. Shelf Awareness (starred) 

A satisfying story of self-discovery. Kirkus

The perfect follow-up, delving deeper into what inspired Feldman s initial decision. Beyond her literal choice, Feldman also considers what it means to be Jewish and to have a homeland. It, like Unorthodox, is a beautifully-written meditation about the very essence of community. Bitch Magazine, "13 Books Feminists Should Read in August"

Exodus, Revisited is a remarkable work that throws sharp light on prejudices within and outside the Jewish faith. Authorlink


Praise for Exodus

In her first memoir, Unorthodox, Feldman made the courageous choice to cut off ties with her family and the Satmar community of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. . . . Now a divorced woman in her twenties, Feldman chronicles the next phase of her life in her new book [Exodus]. . . . A quest of self-discovery . . . Some of the most powerful scenes come when Feldman retraces the path of her female ancestors in Hungary and confronts the anti-Semitism of contemporary Europe. . . . Feldman ultimately discovers that her rightful place is wherever she happens to be. The New York Times Book Review

Feldman s journey is undeniably and explicitly Jewish, but the aching need to find both a welcoming community and a sense of individuality is one that readers from all walks of life will be able to identify with. Those left unsatisfied with the abrupt ending to Unorthodox will enjoy the more hopeful conclusion to Feldman s second book as well as her more mature and increasingly eloquent writing style. Booklist

Overall, Exodus is a satisfying sequel to Unorthodox, which shows how Deborah Feldman went on to the next step after getting her own freedom from the bonds of a strictly insular society. . . . [A] chronicle of a continuing journey of self-discovery . . . There are many satisfying finds and revelations along the road, but there are also plenty of bumps, frustrations, disappointments, and pitfalls, which is expected when one spends their formative years being closed off from the rest of the outside world, and is confined to the boundaries of a Brooklyn neighborhood. . . . This book is more about the liberation of Deborah Feldman, and how she copes with this newfound sense of freedom and self-discovery, that can be a shock to some, or a declaration of independence for others. Stuart Nulman, Montreal Times

One woman's search to understand herself and her Jewish heritage. . . . Rich in details of Jewish life and the lives of her grandparents in the World War II era, [Feldman] sensitively portrays the inner struggles of accepting the pervasive feeling of survivor guilt and her own desires to understand the woman she was becoming. . . . An enthralling account of how one Orthodox Jewish woman turned her back on her religion and found genuineness and validity in her new life. Kirkus

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Questions

Bubby, am I one hundred percent Jewish?

I am eight years old when I first dare to formulate the question I had been turning over in my mind for such a long time. I have been worrying that there might be a sinister reason for the way my thoughts tend toward doubt instead of faith. This way of life we lead, it does not come naturally to me, although I know it should. Because no one else suffers from this affliction, I wonder if genealogical contamination can explain the anomaly. I suspect I am regarded as tainted by my mother's actions, so it follows that she too could have been tainted by someone else, by some mysterious, forgotten ancestor in her past. This would explain why I am the way I am, and not like the others.

Bubby, am I one hundred percent Jewish? I ask. Because I think that whether I am or am not is a matter that defines my destiny. Because I need to know if I have a hope of fitting in.

What a silly question! she exclaims in response. Of course you are Jewish, she assures me. Everybody in our community is. She dismisses my earnest fear with a laugh. But how can she be so certain?

Look at our world, she says. Look at how separate we live. How we have always lived. Jews don't mix with others, and others don't mix with us, so how do you think you could be anything less than one hundred percent?

I didn't think to inquire then why so many people in our community have light eyes, pale skin, and fair hair. My grandmother herself had always spoken proudly of her blond children. Pale, non-stereotypically Jewish features were valuable commodities among us. They meant one would be able to pass. It was the gift of disguise that God granted, seemingly at random, although we were led to believe that he had a precise system in terms of granting privileges, so perhaps lack of blondness denoted a spiritual inferiority, or perhaps it was actually the other way around, depending on how you looked at things. When I met my husband for the first time at the age of seventeen, I focused mostly on his golden hair and what that would mean for my genetic legacy. I wondered if the gene was strong enough to guarantee me golden-haired children, children who would be safe when the world, trapped in its unalterable pattern of orbit, turned against them.

Now I understand that those Eastern European features and fair coloring align perfectly with the genetic studies that have long since confirmed that none of us are one hundred percent of anything. But these findings never made it into our midst, and if they did, they probably wouldn't have mattered. In our community, we believed that as long as we were separate, we were pure by default.

This word, though, "pure"-it doesn't come from our language, from our vocabulary. Our word for "pure" is tuhor, and its original meaning applies only to spiritual purity. It means to be pure of intention, to be clean of sin. In the Hasidic tradition, this kind of purity ostensibly outweighs the importance of strong ancestry. The obsession with pure bloodlines would come later, perhaps as a by-product of the ideology and laws that defined us by exclusion. One drop of Jewish blood was all it took, not for the first time in Hitler's Germany, so those who could, fought to hide that drop and deny its existence, but out of instinctive protectiveness, those who could not retreated into a perverse pride. They invented a kind of purity for themselves. They created family trees that went back a thousand years to show their intact stems. They discriminated against Jews who couldn't prove their undiluted

Langtext

The definitive follow-up to Unorthodox (the basis for the award-winning Netflix series) now updated with more than 50 percent new material the unforgettable story of what happened in the years after Deborah Feldman left a religious sect in Williamsburg in order to forge her own path in the world.

In 2009, at the age of twenty-three, Deborah Feldman packed up her young son and their few possessions and walked away from her insular Hasidic roots. She was determined to find a better life for herself, away from the oppression and isolation of her Satmar upbringing in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. And in Exodus, Revisited she delves into what happened next taking the reader on a journey that starts with her beginning life anew as a single mother, a religious refugee, and an independent woman in search of a place and a community where she can belong. 

Originally published in 2014, Deborah has now revisited and significantly expanded her story, and the result is greater insight into her quest to discover herself and the true meaning of home. Travels that start with making her way in New York expand into an exploration of America and eventually lead to trips across Europe to retrace her grandmother s life during the Holocaust, before she finds a landing place in the unlikeliest of cities. Exodus, Revisited is a deeply moving examination of the nature of memory and generational trauma, and of reconciliation with both yourself and the world. 

Über den AutorIn

Deborah Feldman was raised in the Satmar Hasidic community in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Her first memoir, Unorthodox, was a New York Times bestseller and the inspiration for the hit Netflix series. She lives in Berlin with her son.