Debra Feldman broke away from the
ultra-orthodox Jewish community that she
grew up in in New York she wrote a
best-selling book about her escape
called unorthodox it's a fascinating
story all the more so because she now
finds herself living right here in the
German capital Berlin Deborah Feldman
thank you very very much indeed for
joining us today thank you I'm happy to
be here
lovely and thank you very much as well
for being with us on the interview here
on DW now Deborah I'd like to begin by
asking you to describe if you would for
us the strictly observant community that
you grew up in and that you then
rejected okay so the community I grew up
in in New York was founded by Holocaust
survivors mostly Hungarian Holocaust
survivors who believed that the
Holocaust had been a punishment for
assimilation and for Zionism and they
designed a sort of new ghetto in the
middle of New York City and they
believed that the only way to prevent
another punishment another Holocaust
from happening was to develop a
lifestyle that was stricter than any
Jewish lifestyle that had been lived
before and every single rule that they
designed was like an extreme
interpretation of a Jewish law and they
lived this extreme interpretation
because they believed that they were
appeasing God by doing this and that God
would have mercy on them that he would
quell his anger against the Jews people
the name of the community is the Satmar
community can you just explain for us
where the name actually comes from the
name comes from a town and the Hungarian
Romanian border
satu mathy yeah and it's called Satmar
because it was named after the village
from which the rabbi of our community
came but if you won't go back
historically and you look at the Hasidic
movement which was a sort of a mystical
movement within Judaism that was during
its time very rebellious and very anti
Orthodox it was based in different towns
and cities and each town and city would
have its own rabbi and this rabbi would
acquire a following and the following
will be named after the town so when the
surviving Hasidic members of these towns
came to the US they formed groups again
and
themselves after the town's they had
come from or the rabbi's they had
followed and so my community was mostly
Hungarian survivors who were following
the rabbi who came from the town of such
a Molly and he was a very radical person
already before the war and became much
more radical after the war so as you've
explained the community members grew up
very much under the shadow of the
Holocaust as you did - and I noted in
one of your previous interviews you said
the following I cannot remember a moment
when I was not aware of my identity as a
descendant of Holocaust survivors that's
a very painful mindset it's not
necessarily painful if that's all you
know it's simply a fact of life I what I
meant to say with that is that I can't
remember having like a consciousness and
not being aware that the Holocaust
happened but that is not to say that I
suffered very much every day from this
knowledge I think I can describe a kind
of cumulative suffering that has come
with me as I have grown up and I have
taken with me a lot of irrational fears
from my childhood but during that time I
didn't acknowledge it or experience it
as suffering I just experienced it as
normal I thought it was like this for
everyone and I loved the people who
raised me very very much and the fact
that they were survivors made me feel of
course that my suffering could not
compare to theirs and since I loved them
I never wanted to complain about what I
went through because I only was aware of
what they went through
mm-hmm a very important aspect of how
you grew up is that the Germans were
were vilified and Damned as being the
perpetrators of the Holocaust what was
your understanding of what real Germans
might have been like when you were
growing up it wasn't just that they were
vilified it it was that again that sort
of mystical view of Hasidic people
turned Germans into demons so they
weren't human anymore they were demons
sent by God to get us and I remember my
grandmother telling me things like like
Hitler had chicken feet but he never
took off his shoes so you wouldn't see
but if you took off his shoes you'd see
you had chicken feet and he wasn't a
human being he was a devil these are the
stories I grew up with and it that's all
I heard and it really has become a it
became in the end
the part of my perspective on the world
and it took a long long time to separate
all of those ideas from the ideas I
picked up by traveling and meeting
people in real life and having like
learning how to humanize people who
weren't Jewish I just like to go back to
one another important aspect at the
Satmar community that it was certainly a
harsh environment I think for everybody
involved including men but especially
women yeah it's a harsh environment
because everything is fear driven so
you're living in a constant state of
fear and you're taught that God is exist
only to be feared and you're always
afraid of punishment and you're always
afraid of doing something wrong but I
think for women it's extremely difficult
because women are really seen as
threatening in this community they need
to be completely controlled because
they're the ones who are reproducing and
the community survives and and has the
amount of power and stability it has
because it can control the woman's
reproduction so women are are giving
birth to between 10 and 20 children and
this isn't 20 it is average in my
community at least and this is making
sure that the community grows at an
extremely fast rate but if the women are
not controlled then the the existence
and the permanence and the future of the
community cannot be secured so in order
to control the women they have this
intense fear I think of a female body
and female sexuality and so they turned
this into into the source of evil they
turned this into the big threat and
women are told that their bodies are
very dirty and very shameful and that
their sexuality is is inherently evil
and that they have to work their whole
life just to compensate themselves and
the people around them for the evil they
represent and for the threat that they
pose and you grow up and you learned
that the body is disgusting that you are
disgusting because you are somehow
connected to your body but yet you have
to use your body you have to use your
body to service the community so you're
always living in this contradictory
state of your body is terrible but your
body is important you mentioned the word
control how similar do you think your
experience might have been to other
women's experiences in other similar
communities perhaps in other religions
you know maybe small details are
different but the feelings the
experiences
the major pressures they're all the same
and I've heard this from Christian women
and from Muslim women and from Hindu
women so I don't think there is that
much of a difference I think religious
communities especially extreme religious
communities seem to function pretty much
in the same way and maybe they call her
God by a different name but in the end
it's about people and it's about people
wanting power hmm
you broke away from the community when
you were 23 years old how great was the
sense of liberation that's a tough
question I think the feeling of
liberation maybe came later I think in
the beginning I didn't feel much of
anything was a big shock a big risk to
take there was of course a distinct
chance that I would fail and I knew this
there was also a chance that I would
lose my child and I had done everything
for my child so there's just an inning
there was just immense fear and a
feeling of floating you know not being
tied down to anything not knowing who I
was as a person not knowing what my
future would look like it was extremely
frightening probably I survived it the
way most people survive times like this
by not thinking too much and the
thinking came later and what's
interesting is is that the hardest time
or the hardest part of leaving was
actually when things got better because
then I was able to think again and then
I was able to sort of process for the
first time what I had done and it really
hit me in a very hard way and it took a
long time to kind of just work through
that the echo of my actions so after you
broke away from the Satmar community you
went on a quest you went on a voyage of
self-discovery or a journey of
self-discovery effectively that journey
has brought you now to the this
extraordinary fact you have ended up
living in the German capital Berlin why
well that's a really great question I
think it started actually with the
obsession with Germans because I had
heard all my life that the Germans were
evil and they hated me and I absorbed a
lot of the the stereotypes because in my
community they kind of like echoed back
all these Nazi ideas so they were kind
of obsessed with blood purity in my
community and like being a hundred
percent pure Jewish just like the
Germans were about being hundreds in
pure Aryan and they incorporated this
idea as well that blond people were
genetically better and
look nicer and it was really kind of
obvious to me as I grew up that a lot of
the the Nazi ideas had kind of stayed in
the community and they had absorbed like
the propaganda themselves so when I left
I was sort of obsessed with like how to
deprogram that part of myself how to
stop believing that I was inferior
because I wasn't German because I was
Jewish and when I came to Europe to sort
of research my family history and
especially how my grandmother had lived
before the war I spent a lot of time in
Germany following her footsteps because
she had been incarcerated in Germany
throughout the war but also trying to
see what Germans were really like just
being really curious and but scared at
the same time and then over time
realizing that I was healing myself in a
way that I was deprogramming myself just
by being here and when I came to Berlin
I don't see Berlin as Germany I see
Berlin in a way as the capital of the
West and to me it's the city where where
everyone can find a home where everyone
can find freedom it's the last bastion
against oppression if we shall be
dramatic and I feel as I feel very I
feel as free here as I think I can
possibly feel whereby when people ask
you who you are where you are from you
don't say I'm Jewish you say I'm from
New York that's true I do not Sandra
because I'm still living in Germany and
because there are still neo-nazis and
there's fear there's resistance the
Nazis right there are Nazis here I've
met them and there's also fear of the
immigrants because you have a lot of
anti-israel sentiment and a lot of
people cannot separate anti-israel
sentiment from anti-jewish sentiment so
of course I'm frightened and and this is
something about what it's like to be in
Europe as a Jewish person this is the
shock I think coming from America to
Europe because American Jewish people
take it completely for granted that they
can be whoever they are and nobody is
actually going to even classify them
when when I announced that I was Jewish
in America nobody put me in a Jewish box
they just heard it and said okay but
here if I say I'm Jewish it's not just
the fear of being hated it's the fear of
being put in a drawer and not being
perceived as an individual mm-hmm
fascinating thoughts that provoke man no
we like to conclude the interview on DW
Berg
three incomplete sentences and asking
you to complete the sentences the first
one the main thing I have learnt on my
journey so far is that there's good and
bad everywhere and that it's hard to
generalize to train this is an important
question you've mentioned your
grandmother a very important figure in
your life the one thing I would like to
tell her is that that she made me the
person that I am and that I could never
have accomplished all the things that
I've accomplished without her influence
the next big challenge in my life is
learning how to let people in again
Deborah Feldman thank you very very much
indeed for joining us here on the
interview today thank you