A Picture Exposes The Lie

A smiling, happy Deborah Feldman poses with her smiling, happy parents when Feldman was about 7 years old – years after Feldman claims her mother "abandoned" her.

Comments

[netflix]

oh please, shmarya, calm the fuck down. everyone smiles for cameras.

even princess diana smiled for cameras when her life was shit. that's just the way people are.

[Shmarya]

oh please, shmarya, calm the fuck down. everyone smiles for cameras.

even princess diana smiled for cameras when her life was shit. that's just the way people are.

Posted by: netflix | March 01, 2012 at 08:45 AM

Process: she claimed her mother left the family much earlier – when Df was a toddler.

But that's false.

[MarkfromShortHills]

This is now too much. There is now substantial evidence that Deborah Feldman lied in her memoir. But, the existence of such a smiling picture proves nothing. I am sure that the parents of every abused child will be able to produce at least one family photo showing that child as a happy and smiling son or daughter.

Such a photograph has no evidentiary value about the happiness or lack of it in Deborah Feldman's life, I am sure that you know this, and I am disappointed that you have chosen to attribute such value to something that is so obviously lacking it.

[Shmarya]

This is now too much. There is now substantial evidence that Deborah Feldman lied in her memoir. But, the existence of such a smiling picture proves nothing

Do you read what I write?

Feldman claims her mother ABANDONED THE FAMILY WHEN DF WAS A ***TODDLER***.

But here's a picture of them all together when Feldman is much older than that.

Such a photograph has no evidentiary value about the happiness or lack of it in Deborah Feldman's life, I am sure that you know this, and I am disappointed that you have chosen to attribute such value to something that is so obviously lacking it.

I'm disappointed that you failed to grasp the simple point I was clearly making.

[Lubavitchers are Christians]

Shmarya,

I grasped your simple point. Point well take. Thanks for your exceptional journalism.

[Garnel Ironheart]

No one is missing your main simple point, that Feldman is here seen in a picture with the mother that allegedly abandoned her years earlier. They're taking issue with your "And look, they're all smiling which means they were a happy family" position, that's all.

[Big Mouth]

All the public pics of DF with her Husband are also show her being happy.

[yudel]

enough of your ranting dude....it does not matter period...move on...anger is a trap to bind a person to self righteous behavior being cerain you are correct. You have to deal with where you can make a difference. No one cares about this. You did your stuff move on.

[Betzalel]

Can you prove that she was not a mature-looking toddler when the picture was taken? People age at different rates.

[annms]

Shmarya. You are king but ill have to disagree with you on this one if you see the rate she has aged in 24 years i would guesstimate that she was 2 yrs...........

[willy mom]

your picture speaks volumes!!!

not about the happy part though....

[amused]

Sorry, I don't know who is in this photograph, however I doubt they are the people in question. Current pictures bear no resemblance to the people here.

[Shmarya]

Sorry, I don't know who is in this photograph, however I doubt they are the people in question. Current pictures bear no resemblance to the people here.

Posted by: amused | March 01, 2012 at 09:29 AM

Please.

Either you're trolling for Feldman or you have a serious visual processing problem.

[willy mom]

amused:

i know these people VERY WELL.
IT IS THEM

[Shoshi]

Well it is obviously Deborah Feldman and her mom. I've never seen a photo of her dad, so I can't comment on that, but the context would certainly suggest that's him!

I agree that in general happy photos don't necessarily imply happy people or happy lives. However, the fact that they are posed together as a family, smiling (natural-looking smiles, in my opinion) shows that it was not just a chance photo of them caught together in the same room or something.

Also, if Deborah's sister is 17 now, that means she is 8 years younger than Deborah. So her parents were apparently still together as a family at least until then (a year after this photo was taken).

[Shoshi]

The sister having born when Deborah was already 8 would explain why she had to be left out of the book. It wouldn't fit with the storyline in which Deborah's mom abandoned the family when Deborah was a toddler.

[maven]

Some of the writers here may never have been married, or not have children, but some of us have taken pictures like that, with smiles (usually photographer provoked), even as the family was long dissolved, for many other reasons, particularly family.
Means very little, as does this whole attempt at "debunking" her memoir. (really, someone writes about their nasty experience growing up in Satmar, big deal. People write much worse things, on this very site, for example, and the world doesn't stop rotating).

[Chrissakes - a.k.a. Nigritude U.]

oh please, shmarya, calm the fuck down. everyone smiles for cameras.

The point of this post is that a photo exists that places DF with her seemingly intact family at a time that does jibe with her reported chronology. Though their emotional state may be subordinate to the subject at hand, I can't see any reason to bash someone for using two obvious adjectives that come to mind to describe the subjects in the photo.

[Mike]

The point Shmarya is trying to make is rather simple. She said one thing, the facts are condratictory to her statement, therefore it's a lie. Her happiness/sadness isn't really the issue here.

More books like hers should be written, but only if they contain unadulterated fact. If you lie it damages not only your credibility, but everyone else who escaped the hell these people have to live through.

[Deremes]

This lie that lie her book i assume sells well.Shes an unstable person and doesn't care as long as she has her fifteen minutes of fame.
The anger about her lies should rather be towards Simon&Schuster

[Shoshi]

Amen, Mike.

[Hal]

This may seem an odd comment to make on this blog of all places, but these postings about D. Feldman feel like lashon hara to me. She's not a public figure in charge of children, etc. etc. She's just a kid trying to sort out her life. Just leave her alone already. So she wrote a book saying Satmar is repressive. Big Whoop.

[amused]

I somehow cannot believe the woman in this photograph is Feldman's mother. She doesn't resemble the woman in current pictures in any way.

Again, the shtreimel on this this man's head was not what men wore in the late 1980's. Sorry but I will need a little more convincing.

[Deremes]

amused,
You may try to fool some of the FM readers who don't know them but this is HER father without a question and "willy mom" at 10:55 AM said that its also her mother so stop with the non sense

[Suggestion for deborah]

Ms deborah
if you come out as GAY this site will stop exposing your lies

look at the Lies smarya helps apread against the jewish community by one gay kid

[amused]

Deremes, I am not trying to fool anyone, especially not myself. It is hard for me to see any resemblance between the woman in this picture and in current pictures of her. Did she really change that much? I would also like more clarification as to this modern looking streimal. Please address my point.

[Lawrence M. Reisman]

Amused:

The picture was taken circa 1994. The streiml is consisent with that period. As to Deborah Feldman, look at the nose, the chin, and the forehead from this picture and pictures of her as an adult. They do match.

[amused]

Lawrence M. Reisman, I believe this picture is loter than 1994 because the child in picture is not 7 years old. However, the mother is the one I am questioning. Could she have changed that much? Again, streimals did not look like this in the late 1980's. Please have another look and explain.

[Deremes]

amused,
I don't know the mother but know the father and its HER father,its HER father and its HER father.

[Moshe]

Amused. I don't know them so I can't tell you for a fact but it you look at her features you will see that they are the same. Lips are the same. eyes slant the same way. the picture above is a forward distance angle but it's very similar. and overall bone structure is similar. yes - some people don't age well.

( I am comparing to the picture that Shmarya posted with her holding the NY Post )

[seymour]

Posted by: amused | March 01, 2012 at 01:24 PM

I know who owns the picture, and they are honest and would never lie about something like that.

See deremes i can say a satmar chusid is honest

[Steve K]

Amused,
It's them.I know the father and the mother is wearing contacts and a wig in this picture.

[Lawrence M. Reisman]

Amused:

The girl in the picture looks 7 years old to me. (And I should have some idea, with 5 daughters and 3 granddaughters). That means it was taken 18 years ago, or 1993 or 1994. And I do remember streimlich looking like that back then. And by the way, a woman's appearance can change radically after she reaches age 40, so there is nothing necessarily inconsistent with that being her mother. And it not her parents, with whom would she be posing?

[Joe Field]

Last few weeks I was reading the give and take about the book Deborah Feldman penned. Prior to any comments let me assure everybody that I never spoke with this author, I never read the book and I don’t plan to read the book, and I didn’t feel the need to even comment on the sincerity of the writer. Finally after reading all the minutiae I can to the conclusion that it is important to put this whole saga in perspective.

What is going on is that we have two type of criticism, the first group is people like Deremes, who would just yell and scram that everything she wrote is lie and distorted. The same method they use for everybody who dares to criticize their community. There is zero logic to get into a detail discussion, because, at the end they will always revert and argue that you hate religion, and therefore, you cannot be right. The other group, are people like Shmarya, who as a purveyor of the news in the orthodox community, has the responsibility to point out any misstatements or outright falsehood. And I will not argue that he should not point out, what it seems that she embellished some of the peripheral story.

People who are willing to attack the writer fail to understand that the core of the story is true. People get married to who their parents select. And a photo of a smiling wife or husband doesn’t necessary reflect their real personal feeling. In the beginning of every bad marriage, people tend to hide their misery. Husbands do take their wife’s underwear to the rabbi, and on and on.

This book is not part on a legal proceeding were the defense always tries to find contradiction and tries to impeach the whole testimony. As in the legal proceedings, everybody remembers events according to how they believe their recollection, but in no way will a nonessential event change the facts that in the orthodox communities’ people are subrogated not to God, but the leadership.

Finally, I call on every descent human being, to put yourself in her shoes and judge her as you would like people to judge you.

[Deremes]

Joe Field,You say:
++What is going on is that we have two type of criticism, the first group is people like Deremes, who would just yell and scram that everything she wrote is lie and distorted.++

No. I said it more then once that i have no problem when she is making fun of halach and customs.I mean it does bother a bit if she tells to the secular world details about family purity but hey way more prominent people then this demented girl made fun of it. So its no big deal. It is the lies that she tells about the community. Check back all my comments you will see what i wrote.

[SkepticalYid]

I have no connection whatsoever to Feldman. I did read the book carefully. Feldman talks about her mother being in and out of her life from a very young age. The book is badly edited and is extremely disorganized. I have no idea if her claims on these particulars are true or false. However her book does mention many particulars of Satmar about which there are no debate. No one debates Shomrim beating a black teenager nearly senseless, with impunity. No one debates the extremist gender segregation and deliberately compromised secular education detailed in the book. It's obvious that there is a campaign to smear this book based on some particulars that may not be verifiable without speaking directly to the parties involved- like her mother. It's sad to see that no one is doing PROPER investigative journalism to see if there's any foundation to the allegations raised by Satmar.

[SkepticalYid]

By the way, Shmarya, if this was a happy Satmar family- why is there only one sister who's years younger? Why aren't there other children of intermediate ages? Has anyone even tried to determine if Deborah and her sister share the same father?

[Shamariya Gershon]

Shmarya, I really appreciate the work you do, and I think you do a great job, by and large. But I think you missed the point some of the other posters were making about how you characterized this photograph. It is accurate journalism to describe the people as smiling, but it is sensationalistic and pure conjecture to assume that their internal emotional state was "happy." That is the objection to what you wrote. Everyone understands that you are showing the picture as proof of discrepancies in what Feldman claimed was the year when her parents separated. Other posters are contesting that for other reasons, but please understand what the objection to the word "happy" was all about. Thank you again for all your hard work.

[emanuel]

You really hate this chick Scott.

[Eli Feinstein]

Maybe she is not Jewish! Satmar Jews do not have names ending with "ic".

[Radical Feminist]

I dunno Shmarya, my mother walked out on me when I was 7. But, she did come to visit on holidays....I could show you plenty of pictures of us together years later smiling (even though I can assure you we were quite miserable) and she was almost never around.

[willy mom]

amused, youre nuts! obsessing over the shtreimel like that!

ITS THEM!
shoshana babysat for me...ok?
she doesnt wear a sheitel anymore so of course she looks diff. and i know her ex....

[Joe Field]

It is the lies that she tells about the community. Check back all my comments you will see what i wrote.
Posted by: Deremes | March 01, 2012 at 04:58 PM
Exactly my point, that from what I read in this blog, the distortions and misrepresentations is not relevant to what the author present, that the Satmar way of life is an oppressive lifestyle.

You, on the other hand, believe that your way of life is what God demanded of all of us. Furthermore, your way is the only truth, and commandment of God, therefore, no matter what fact or logic we try to argue to no avail. I challenge you to cite one lie she wrote about a specific rule or event, even the alleged killing of the masturbating child she is only laying out a story, in which she doesn’t claim to have first hand information just hearsay. But if you strip away all the hyperbole you must admit that she did layout a good summation of the inner workings of the Satmar community

[Shmarya]

I dunno Shmarya, my mother walked out on me when I was 7. But, she did come to visit on holidays....I could show you plenty of pictures of us together years later smiling (even though I can assure you we were quite miserable) and she was almost never around.

Posted by: Radical Feminist | March 01, 2012 at 11:07 PM

She left when DF was turning 17 – not 7. There are hundreds of witnesses to this.

[amused]

willy mom, thank you for confirming the authenticity of this photograph but I really have to wonder why you used such a nasty tone in which to do it? And here, despite it all, I believed so much in the goodness of your community. I am afraid I am understanding Ms. Feldman more and more even though I do not condone what she did. I know she didn't live a day in your community feeling like she belonged. This is what holier than thou Satmar needs to look at.

[Barry]

I recently read an autobiography about a fighter pilot who had successfully led a wing during a particular tough part of the war and whose war ended after being shot down and taken prisoner. The book stated that he had been shot down following a dog fight with a German fighter, however in all likelihood he had been shot down in a friendly fire incident by a member of his own squadron. His 'lie' (which he maintained to his death) was clearly intended to defend the reputation for competence of the pilot who shot him down and the air force that he loved. After his death it was discovered that the airman also 'lied by omission' in failing to mention that at the start of the war, he obtained his commission as an officer by falsifying his flying log to suggest he had flown the necessary hours to obtain officer rank.

These 'lies' by the airman were understandable and in do not subvert the value of his memoirs.

I suspect something similar has happened with Feldman in that her 'lies' are intended to protect her mother from the accusation that she should have done more to help her daughter in her difficult teenage years. By taking her out of the picture before her daughter reached that age, Feldman is giving her mother some (admittedly weak) grounds to for suggesting that she was not aware of the extent of her daughter's unhappiness.

The important truth in the book relates to the shocking mental abuse of girls and women by the Satmar cult and that is what sells the book.

[Shmarya]

I really have to wonder why you used such a nasty tone in which to do it? And here, despite it all, I believed so much in the goodness of your community. I am afraid I am understanding Ms. Feldman more and more even though I do not condone what she did. I know she didn't live a day in your community feeling like she belonged. This is what holier than thou Satmar needs to look at.

Posted by: amused | March 02, 2012 at 05:43 AM

The troll protests too much.

[מרדכי סטמר]

I'm sick and tired to see every other day 2-3 stories about this little spoiled shmendrick, that somehow got more attention then she could handle.

And Shmaryah with his "great journalism skills" comes up with minor little details of "her life" that can be proven outright lies, and as most commentators here have pointed out, that "no one" bought her book, because they are interested in an exact biography of "her" its Satmar and orthodoxy that people from the outside want to have a glimpse of.

And while Shamaryah sees her as the liar as she definitely is, and he fights like a dog to explain why if "her" mother left when she was 17 and she says she left her as a toddler,that it makes her dishonest.

But when it comes to the REAL interest (of Satmar) of people why she got her 15 minutes of fame, he doesn't see the importance to "find" her intentional "inaccuracies". When its much easier to prove her "distortions" as lies.

And please don't tell me that twisting the facts doesn't make a whole lot of a difference, because it does make a huge difference!

As when she claims that there is a "curfew on "women" at nighttime" to be on the street.
Go for a visit to williamsburg and tell me if there are no "women" on the street, "women" in restaurants, 30 minutes "parents" decision on marriage.

If being "in" college and taking courses online is a different thing,
Being abandoned as a toddler, and her mother leaving her at 17, is in your book something that needs to be a headline, while people aren't really interested in "her lifes" nuance details,

Why isn't it -at least the same- important to point out her verifiable outright distortions of the community of why the people are actually purchasing her book?

(Last comment of mine on this subject)

[Another Reader]

Barry, I think you are giving DF way too much credit. She was the one who ran away from her parents' home because she didn't get along with her mother. After living with other relatives, she ended up with her grandparents, who lived in the same building as her parents. Claiming that her mother abandoned her is merely a way to garner the reader's sympathy and make her story sound all the more tragic. In fact, when Feldman's mother finally did leave her father for good, she offered to take Deborah, but Deborah had much more freedom living with her grandparents and by that time was reaching marriage age anyway, so her mother left only with Deborah's sister, who was about 8 or 9 at the time.

[Joe]

I haven't read all the comments, but the disclaimer in my copy of the book says:The names and identifying characteristics of everyone in this book have been changed. While all the incidents described in this book are true, certain events have been compressed, consolidated, or reordered to protect the identities of the people involved and ensure continuity of the narrative. All dialogue is as close an approximation as possible to actual conversations that took place, to the best of my recollection.I think that deals with your criticisms.

[elia]

Divorce people usually battle separation for years-especially under pressure from a highly religious marriage and family! DF could have been left at the grandparent's house while the mother came in and out of the father's life; hence he lived on his own. A parent can leave the family and return on occasions, this still creates unhappy children. I would still consider that an abandonment. If you don't like her book don't read it! And if you are so worried about everyone reading lies then let us read a book of lies. I still learned from her book--lies or not!