Deborah Feldman Exposed – Again

This much appears to be almost certainly true: Deborah Feldman, now 25, was born to Eugen and Shoshana Berkovic of Penn St., Brooklyn.  They were Satmar Jews – an insular sect that settled in Williamsburg after the Holocaust and lives in what some call a wholesale rejection of modernity. The problem is that much of the book appears to based on lies.

Deborah Feldman and Barbara Walters

The second coming of James Frey? Hasidic Jews charge that one of their own has published a memoir full of lies
Alexander Nazaryan • New York Daily News Book Blog

The memoir is a devilish genre. The pull of embellishment must be great, for even the most ordinary life has its dull moments. Why subject your readers to the mundane, when one or two novelistic flourishes can add the necessary sheen? (Photo: Simon & Schuster)

And calling an enhanced memoir what it is – a novel – won’t do. Weaned on reality shows and social networking, today’s readers demand lived experiences. Invention doesn't cut it anymore.
 
Thus we arrive at James Frey, crying on Oprah’s couch because he had been unable to admit that “A Million Little Pieces” was not quite the truthful account he had claimed it was.
 
And thus we arrive, also, at Deborah Feldman, driving Barbara Walters to the verge of tears on “The View” on Feb 14.
 
But not because Feldman’s memoir, “Unorthodox,” had been revealed as a work of fiction. The women of “The View,” Walters especially, had the highest praise for her book, which they described as an honest account of the insular Hasidic community of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, that Feldman left after being forced into marriage at 17 and motherhood at 19.
 
But while Frey and Feldman could not come from more different backgrounds, they seem to have arrived in the same place, two memoirists having to fend off damning accusations of deceit.

Furor among Hasidic Jews has been building long before Feldman published her book – her writing initially appeared on her blog, Hasidic Feminist. Now that her book is receiving acclaim (with reviews calling her book “harrowing” and “poignant”), they are acutely angry that Feldman has gained literary success by portraying them as a backwards, repressive community.

And while some of what the Jewish blogosphere has said about Feldman is, itself, little more than vitriol, serious accusations have come out – on blogs like Failed Messiah and Exposing the Lies and Fabrications of Deborah Feldman, not to mention The Jewish Week and the venerable Forward, which called her book “more than ‘Unorthodox’”

This much appears to be almost certainly true: Deborah Feldman, now 25, was born to Eugen and Shoshana Berkovic of Penn St., Brooklyn.  They were Satmar Jews – an insular sect that settled in Williamsburg after the Holocaust and lives in what some call a wholesale rejection of modernity.
 
Feldman’s father has a low IQ and has held only menial jobs. Feldman went to the UTA Yeshiva, a highly religious school where Yiddish was spoken and secular literature was forbidden.
 
At 17, she was married to a man named Eli. At 19, she had a son. She and Eli moved to Kiryas Joel, in upstate New York, which they felt was a less suffocating environment than Brooklyn.
 
But by 23, she had enough. She left her husband, taking her son with her. She took writing classes at Sarah Lawrence College. She got a book deal with Simon & Schuster. Now, she is just another ordinary New Yorker.
 
Well, not ordinary. Most aspiring writers would murder to publish with the kind of publicity Feldman has received.
 
The problem is that much of her memoir may not be true, according to ardent critics. These include family members, neighbors and even New York State authorities.
 
In the book, Feldman charges her mother – who was apparently burdened by the pressures of Satmar life – with a “mysterious disappearance” when Feldman was a toddler.

In fact, it takes about 30 seconds to find Shoshana Berkovic on both Twitter and Facebook. She is a science teacher at New Utrecht High School and does not appear to have ever left Brooklyn. She did divorce her husband, as court records indicate. But that was in 2010, more than a decade after Feldman accuses her mother with leaving her behind. (Shoshana Berkovic / Facebook) 
 
Feldman leaves out another relevant fact about her family – that she has a sister, now 17 and living with her mother. For reasons I cannot quite fathom, she entirely deletes her sister’s existence from what is supposed to be a truthful account of her life.
 
And while Feldman waxes poetic about how she had to sneak  secular literature (“Reading an English book is…a welcome mat put out for the devil”), neighbor Pearl Engleman distinctly remembers Berkovic taking both of her daughters to the public library on Fridays. “Flat-out lies” is what Engleman calls  Feldman’s description of her family life.
 
Feldman writes in great detail about her strict religious education in Williamsburg. But she fails to mention that she only attended the supposedly restrictive UTA for four years – and that only after being kicked out of a much more lax yeshiva in Manhattan, Bas Yaakov of the lower East Side. A cousin says that Feldman was expelled for making comments about sex.
 
But this is the worst of it: Feldman alleges that when she and her husband were living in Kiryas Joel, Eli learned from his brother Cheskel that a 13 year old boy had been murdered by his father for masturbating. The father, according to Feldman’s account, cut off the boy’s penis and let him bleed to death. The Jewish ambulance service, known as Hatzalah, supposedly helped cover up the crime.
 
Fascinating, but at the very least dubious. As Hella Winston of The Jewish Week first reported and the Daily News confirmed, the young man in question was seven years older than Feldman reported, and evidence from the coroner, the New York State police, ambulance workers who reported the crime and family members of the dead man all overwhelmingly suggest that they young man died from slitting his own neck.
 
An uncle of the dead man calls Feldman a “psychopath.”
 
And yet she persist in her claims. A post on her blog reads, “I can only be responsible for the things I write. I cannot be responsible for what reporters write. Misunderstandings, misinterpretations, and just plain getting the facts wrong is common in journalism. But anything I sign my name to, I will stand by.”
 
Nor will Simon & Schuster make her available for an interview. Her publicist sent me the following statement: “Deborah Feldman’s 'Unorthodox' is an inspiring memoir that recounts, from the author’s perspective, her experiences as a child growing up in the Satmar community, and her eventual departure from that life. We are confident that 'Unorthodox' accurately presents her deeply personal recollections of that journey.”
 
But that has hardly quelled critics. “Doesn’t Simon & Schuster check its facts?” wonders Engleman.
 
Feldman seemingly deals with that question in “Unorthodox” when she describes a novel she enjoyed as a teenager: “Even if the book claims it’s a novel, I read it like a breathtaking piece of raw journalism, because the stories detailed within are so current and real, they could be happening to me, and I know that the author must have at least based the book on her intimate life experiences.”
 
Not an answer that will comfort her many critics.

The Daily News has a shorter version of this Daily News book blog piece in its print/web edition. But that 'official' piece does not credit me or Hella Winston or The Jewish Week for uncovering Feldman's lies.

And that speaks volumes about what is wrong with much of the media, and itself throws a bit of light on how Simon and Schuster could stand behind  book predicated on lies.

Comments

[SkepticalYid]

1. Feldman does not detail when her parents divorced. She indicates when her mother left her in the custody of her grandparents because of intense pressure from her family when her mother came out as a lesbian.
2. She never states that she was in UTA throughout her education. Based on the text she indicates that she entered UTA in Middle School (Junior High School).
3. The cousin's statement about Feldman's expulsion from BY for sexual innuendo has never been confirmed with the institution. Yet this hearsay is accepted as fact.
4. Many Satmar OTDrs have stated that public libraries were off limits. In the book she makes it clear that she went with a cousin to a kosher library with rabbinically censored Yiddish books on a weekly basis in a Williamsburg apartment. This is the library Engelman references.
5. Feldman never states that the murder allegations were reported objectively. She indicates that they were reported as hearsay by her husband.

With the exception of her sister, an egregious omission, all the above mentioned allegations are suspect and many involve deliberate misreading of the text of her book. We also don't know why she omitted her sister's existence from the book. It may well have been at the request of her mother and/or sister in order to protect her.

Shmarya-- you can do better. Hopefully this has nothing to do with satisfying your main sponsor: The Jewish Press. They print plenty of material on a weekly basis you could take to task just as easily.

[shanda]

שלא היה בהן פרוץ בערוה, תדע לך שהרי בת אחת היתה ופרסמה הכתוב

[annms]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcWzHCGVqXg&feature=youtu.be

[Shoshi]

“Even if the book claims it’s a novel, I read it like a breathtaking piece of raw journalism, because the stories detailed within are so current and real, they could be happening to me, and I know that the author must have at least based the book on her intimate life experiences.”

If ONLY Deborah Feldman had taken this approach. If only she had written a novel based on her experiences and not claimed it was truth, dragging real people into it. Ugh.

[Big Mouth]

Hey SkepticalYid, Feldman ommited the sister in order to make sure it fits with her storyline that her mother "left the family" when she was very young, or that Deborah was taken away due to the mom being a lesbian.

But if Deborah would insert the sister into the mix, the line of "abandoning" the family, or family putting pressure, would not fly because one would wonder why the family took away Deborah and not the other sister and/or how an abandoning Mom still cares for another sister.

As for starting Satamr in Middle School, does Feldman write where she was untill then? Why she left the old school? Em, ah er...

If Simon and Schuster is SO sure that Feldman speaks the truth, they would make her available to the NYDN, considering that Feldman was interviwed by way smaller people.

[BiF]

Debbie is a see you next tuesday. That's it and that's all.

[Big Mouth]

Another thing Skeptical Yid: why are you ready to believe that a principle in Satamar slapped her in her ass but you are not ready to believe the reasons why she was expelled from another school? You choose which sex lines you like? A memoir has a right to the Author's perspective; not a right to new facts. So I will smash my comupter one more time I see her fefenders using the "its a memoir; own perspective" line that is thrown at us every time you counter Feldman with FACTS!

[BaltimoreYid]

I'd be OK with her writing as long as she admitted that her writings were 'based on truth'. I am certain that there is a gold mine in factual info within the confines of the Chareidi world. I'd love to see some non-fiction come out of these insular bastions of a "no comment" world.

[I'm Out!]

Being raised in Williamsburg and going to the same elementary school but the one in Williamsburg as Debra Feldman I can say that I was expelled from school for sitting on a public transportation bus next to a boy. I did not know the boy I was just sitting there. Yes Rabbi and Rebetzin Kaplan expelled me.

.........and let us not forget when Rabbi Hellman of the same school raided the public library and all the girls ran between the bookcases to hide from him.

Until you walk a mile in her shoes, don't judge her.

Satmar is a cult!

[Gevezener Chusid]

I'm Out: In what year are we talking about that Rabbi and Rebitzen Kaplan expelled you, and from which school was that?

[Deremes]

SkepticalYid-
1.Her book is about being raised in SATMAR.The other school she went "Vienn" is more liberal(if the term can be used) then satmar.But she makes no mention about it.

2.You seem to believe her anything but when you being told about her any negatives you say its hearsay.

3.Public libraries are off limit,agreed. On another thread there was a discussion how she said that there are Yiddish libraries in williamsburg and she was the ONLY who went there becuase kids in the community don't like reading.Which is obviously a lie becuase the Yiddish library is there for a reason not only for lying DF

4.There is in williamsburg a library with English books only(not the public library)and its full of girls coming and going.Doesn't matter what kind of books her point is that English is not really allowed.

You seem to doubt that this young foolish troubled kid is lying in this whole fiasco even when very few people who are far from being hassidic are saying that she is.

[Deremes]

I'm Out,

Satmar is a cult,fine.But Rabbi and Rebetzin Kaplan were not in Satmar.

[Foo Foo Foooooy]

Ms Feldman is another of the great products of the OTD mill called Foo, available to enlighten us, as is her buddy and great defender, JG, one little brain in one little bed, in one little room, with one big dream of turning as many Jews as possible OTD.

These rebels, only a micro-mini teeny minority of the Chassidic population, meet up in that Foo****** organization where these foul-mouthed rebels encourage one another and others to do the same, walk the same, talk the same, with hatred and mockery, and call it freedom.

All this with the help of government funding!!! and Foo employees, who guard members' privacy, with each meeting place a KGB guarded secret, and prevent non-members from observing the goings-on there, in the name of "helping" these foul mouthed rebels.

If it were chiefly education Foo was helping with, that would be ok.
Unfortunately they help in any way possible by providing instructions for immorality and glorifying it.

[TheReverendRabbiRunDMC]

You still haven't read the book I see. You are a psychopath when it comes to DF. You still haven't made a single point of legitimate merit that changes the story IF YOU READ IT. Her book is an account of her own life. Her neighbors didn't live in her house. I can go on and on, but so can you. I can't believe you're still harping on this part of it. READ the dang book and give this much attention to penis sucking, herpes spreading fake rabbis please. A girl who was rejected repeatedly by her community owes you NOTHING.

[Shmarya]

You make unwarranted assumptions.

Past that, genius, by definition a memoir is and "account of her own life."

But that does not give her the right to lie, to make up stories and to smear the people she writes about with them.

Why did she do it?

Because she can count on the stupidity of lots of people like you.

[TheReverendRabbiRunDMC]

Who did she lie about? In the book she never says the date her mother divorced her dad. In the book she never said she didn't have a sister. She never said she was an only child. Are you saying the experiences she had with her family behind closed doors aren't true? Where you there and the people who say she is lying there? Tell me about them. Being across the street, next door, or in school is not going to give you access to what went on in her home at every moment, nor does it give access to her emotions and feelings. There is nothing stupid about honoring someone's feelings and emotions UNLESS you live in that community where that is a sin.

[Rebel from 30 years ago]

Making public libraries off limits is a form of child abuse. Reading and access to books are a fundamental part of living in a democracy. No adult has the right to take this away from a child.

Deborah has said publicly she left out mention of her sister to protect her, given the sister is still underage.

It seems like a lot of people in the community she left are jealous because she is a good writer who is making a lot of money and already has two more books in the works. They also feel threatened by her desire to open a shelter for other women who want to leave this life they never chose.

There are a lot of rebels not just from the Hasidic sects but from other Orthodox sects as well. No one should be forced to live according to a narrow set of rules he or she does not believe in.

Back in the dark ages, I was in one of those prisons (schools), and 30 years later, I still have nightmares about it. They were already crazy then. One day the school had no heat in the dead of winter and everyone was sitting around in winter coats. One girl got fed up and anonymously called the town Board of Health and complained. The psychotic principal threw a fit, asking that the person identify herself and going on and on about how what she did "desecrated the name of God." Guess what? God wasn't sitting in a freezing building wearing a winter coat because the school was negligent in getting the heat fixed.

[Rebel from 30 years ago]

To this day, I regret not standing up and saying I made the call even though I wasn't the one who did it. Later, when we found out who it was (crazy principal never knew), we all treated her as a heroine. I wish I had had the guts to do what she did.

Lucky for the Orthodox community, I don't want anyone on this planet to know I ever had anything to do with them. I was not an Orthodox child because I never believed in it. Anything I observed was the equivalent of doing something at gunpoint--not of my own free will. I redid my childhood as "take two" being secular and over time have come to be able to forget most of the horrors of that time. No books from me, but that's not because I care for that community. It's because I would never want anyone to know I was its prisoner.

[Proud to be foul mouthed?]

Rebel from 30 years ago:

I agree your principal was nuts! Id have reported him!

So sorry that you were a prisoner and hoping you've found a fulfilling life, in the warm and fuzzy modern society, where all is good and individuals are given the freedom to smoke, drink, take drugs recreationally, party and lust on, bed-hop on, birth control on, abort on, etc, as they please, all or some of the above, with foul language as dessert with the everthing goes in the name of enlightenment mentality, away from the horrors of religion.

I hate your principal nevertheless!

[Rebel from 30 years ago]

The principal was a she, and yes, she was psychotic.

I have been happily secular for 30 years--never had an abortion, never smoked, don't bed hop, don't especially like foul language, and drink little more than a glass of champagne on New Year's Eve. I hang out with like-minded liberal hippie Occupy types and environmentalists who find meaning in healing our planet. Enlightenment has come through the pursuit of advanced degrees, literature, and science.

I lived those horrors in that prison, and occasionally, I still have nightmares about them--yes, 30 years later. Going secular is the best thing I did.

You really need to educate yourself instead of believing cookie-cutter stereotypes.

[Proud to be foul mouthed?]

Rebel from 30 years ago :

"You really need to educate yourself instead of believing cookie-cutter stereotypes"

Good for you, that youre different!

Not my fault if thats the way the guys I work with who are Footsteppers, present themselves, and they dont even try to hide it! Theyre free to do as they please. And the above is what pleases them.

Are you saying that no Footsteppers at all, or only a tiny percentage of Footsteppers, fit that stereotype?

How many "penis sucking, herpes spreading fake rabbis" are there, Rebel, who seems not rebellious?

[Rebel from 30 years ago]

Proud to be foul mouthed, your name is appropriate because you're obsessed with sex.

I just wanted my freedom to eat what I want, go out any night I want, celebrate whatever holiday I want, marry whoever I want or not marry at all, not be told how to dress, and not be considered a number in a census or a thing to be gained or lost by the Jewish community. That's how most rebels feel, and it's how I felt since about age 6. I didn't want to be surrounded by religious nuts who think every misfortune is God's punishment. Unfortunately, you've made up your mind and are determined to not be confused by the facts.

[A Newly Manipulated Dummy!]

Rebel from 30 years ago:

"determined to not be confused by the facts"

March on to the beat of the Footsteps drummers, my friend. Youve become exactly what you think you've escaped. A fully active practicing dummy member of the Footsteps cult, who wouldnt dare mention anything they do wrong. Perhaps they're all perfect there. What freedom! All you did was change G-ds.

As long as youre happy all dumbed out by the Footsteps Manifesto into believing everything THEY say and following like a manipulated dummy, who wouldnt dare to be different.

[Rebel from 30 years ago]

I've never had any contact with Footsteps or met anyone from the group. I don't think they even existed in 1981.

I found my own way myself, with the help of individual friends and a therapist in my area.

Everyone has the right to be different, including kids.

[An "openminded" "No Dogs Allowed" situation.]

Rebel from 30 years ago, yes its a free country. Id probably like you if I met you in the flesh. We have a lot in common.

If youre not aware, Footsteps currently programs people, and shows their distaste for religous people openly, even highly educated religious intellectuals. This is their style of open-mindedness. I find it hard to respect organizations or people like that. The "less than shiny crayons in the box", the people they attract, dont realize or dont care, or are just looking for commonality, bonding with other ""less than shiny crayons in the box".

Foots is looking to churn out as many hateful think-alike, walk-alike, talk-alike "Footsteps Hasids" as possible, who will give Footsteps good press, so staff can continue to get paid.

Religious is a dirty word there. Its a "No Dogs Allowed" situation. Theyre just a bunch of power hungry dirty hateful foul mouthed loud racists themselves, who need one another for company, and need a movement of like minded members to bond with and feel accomplished.

Ive heard only a tiny percentage there get advanced degrees, with all the money donated to this organization towards that goal, because, again, theyre not working with the shiniest crayons in the box. Thats the kind Footsteps attracts. But they do churn out lots of haters.

[Meir]

Shmarya. I'm disturbed by your participation in the campaign against Deborah Feldman and "Unorthodox". I've been to a Feldman reading and just started reading the book. Deborah Feldman seems to be a perpetual "self-promotion" machine. Also, she must have rubbed some of the other OTDs the wrong way. (And deciding you want out does not automatically entitle you to take your kid along.)

Still, from my reading, from her comments and from what I've read from others, I don't see what substantive issues, you, as someone who experienced Haredi/Hasidic life, would have with Feldman and Unorthodox.

A lot of Feldman's "lies" have been adequately responded to. I realize that in the frum world, readers have unlimited time and attention spans, but "beyond", editing is required.

I understand that Feldman has a sister. Did she deny it?

The timeline of her mom's disengaging is murky. Feldman tells how other family members pushed her mom aside. That does not negate the possibility of Mom still being around sometime, or mom and daughter being photographed on some occasion. Are family breakups usually carried out over a convenient weekend? So Mom took the little sister? Could it be that Bubbe and Zayde were not in position to nurse an infant or care for a toddler?

I saw that blog "Deborah Feldman Exposed". It had one post with the bold hedline "The evidence that Deborah Feldman didn't attend Satmar". Reading the entire post, you learn that Feldman did attend (at least) two other schools, but also attended Satmar. So, how does a headline like that serve the truth? The story begins with Feldman at Satmar. Does the story change substantially, if she's attended other schools, even if she's been expelled for misbehavior? It shouldn't surprise anyone if Feldman had difficulty fitting in.

And the infamous "murder" of "suicide". I haven't reached that part, but I understand that she tells it the way she heard it and likely believed it. To me, it's illustrative of the power of the "urban legend" in the frum community, especially among the young (just like the stories that circulated among my cohorts about this or that pop star having studied at this or that yeshivah for this or that amount of time).

The Haredi world (most of the time) expects the individual to totally subsume him or herself to the will of the community. Feldman, by asserting herself, breaks that rule and sets an example for others to follow. I understand why rabbis, parents and teachers don't like this and would like to negate what she's done. But we've seen the nasty side of what happens when the collective has unchecked power.

The premise of the attack on Feldman is that there are "lies" in the story. Therefore, the story is "based on lies" and must be false. It must therefore not portray life in Haredi Williamsburg, as seen through the eyes of an a young girl. While there are omissions in the story and some things readers may not understand, but I don't believe that smart readers would see them as "lies". That her background is dysfunctional does not take away her right to tell her story.

Haredi life can be amazingly wonderful and worth the sacrifices. But it's not for everyone. For those who wish, there needs to be a safe way out. There are hundreds of organizations whose aim is to help people join Haredism. One organization to help people leave ought not upset people.

To me, the most vicious elements of the campaign against Feldman smack of an amateur or professional effort to discredit her and squash the story. Also, to chill any would-be Deborah Feldmans in the future, should they contemplate leaving the life and/or telling their story. You, Shmarya, survived the excesses of Haredi life. You experienced and "called out" the onslaught against you perpetrated by "Friends of Rubashkin" and their professional PR reps. I'd have thought that you would be above getting in the dirt with the "Exposing Deborah Feldman" types.

[David]

Read the book. Make up your own mind. Read the book. Make up your own mind. Read the book. Make up your own mind. Read the book. Make up your own mind. Read the book. Make up your own mind. Read the book. Make up your own mind. Read the book. Make up your own mind. Read the book. Make up your own mind. Read the book. Make up your own mind. Read the book. Make up your own mind. Read the book. Make up your own mind. Read the book. Make up your own mind. Read the book. Make up your own mind. Read the book. Make up your own mind. Read the book. Make up your own mind. Read the book. Make up your own mind.

[DGM]

Wow, what a nitpicky argument about a personal memoir. The book is primarily about what Feldman felt about her community and its structures, and she isn't the first or last to say such things about the Satmar community.

If you are looking for excuses to close your eyes and ears, sure, her book isn't a news article.

That people have such a strong reaction to this book shows that they feel threatened by it, because they know the basic allegations leveled by the book are true, even if some of the details are altered for the sake of literary structure.