Exodus seems to assume prior knowledge of Unorthodox. (This is not necessarily an exaggeration - many contemporary scions of Hasidic families were not Hasidic or very Hasidic before WWII this process of the Hasidization of many survivors who flocked to rebbes and rebuilt Hasidic communities, of Hungarian speakers who produced Yiddish speaking grandchildren, should be told.) She reflected about Jewish identity and pined for her grandmother, whom she now sees as less of a shaved Hasidic bubby, and more of an elegant European survivor with a secular legal name who isn't really Hasidic. She failed to feel like she fit into the Southern family of a college friend. She made a pilgrimage to Hungary where she admired the trees, the paprika, and how local yokels treated her like a celebrity from America. She complains that she is forever tied to her ex husband, who may well complain that he is forever tied to his ex wife, if he were to write his memoir. So what has she been up to? She moved to New England. In Exodus I could only surmise that some kind of looming contract driven deadline was forcing her to complete a manuscript.Įxodus is the story of what Deborah Feldman has been up to since Unorthodox was released. She chose the genre of memoir literature once again which is unfortunate, because the stories we accumulate in our first quarter century generally provide more material then the ones we gather over the next two years. Be that as it may, a hit requires a sophomore effort, and Exodus is hers. I later learned from mutual acquaintances that something like that had in fact happened Feldman had workshopped the first part of the book in college.

To me it felt like she'd probably worked on that main material really well and then had to end it, to complete the book. Then it kind of jumped up to hyperspeed, got vague and just kind of ended.

When I read Deborah Feldman's first memoir Unorthodox I thought it was written pretty well, until about half to two-thirds of the way in.

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