Becoming Un-orthodox

Becoming Un-orthodox
Author: Lynn Davidman
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2015
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0199380503

Lynn Davidman offers an in-depth study of defectors from Orthodox Judaism, showing how they negotiate the difficult passage away from their families and communities and reconstruct their identities in new social contexts.

Unorthodox

Unorthodox
Author: Deborah Feldman
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2012-10-02
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1439187010

Traces the author's upbringing in a Hasidic community in Brooklyn, describing the strict rules that governed her life, arranged marriage at the age of seventeen, and the birth of her son, which led to her plan to leave and forge her own path in life.

Modern Orthodox Judaism: A Documentary History

Modern Orthodox Judaism: A Documentary History
Author: Zev Eleff
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
Total Pages: 567
Release: 2016-07-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0827612575

Modern Orthodox Judaism offers an extensive selection of primary texts documenting the Orthodox encounter with American Judaism that led to the emergence of the Modern Orthodox movement. Many texts in this volume are drawn from episodes of conflict that helped form Modern Orthodox Judaism. These include the traditionalists’ response to the early expressions of Reform Judaism, as well as incidents that helped define the widening differences between Orthodox and Conservative Judaism in the early twentieth century. Other texts explore the internal struggles to maintain order and balance once Orthodox Judaism had separated itself from other religious movements. Zev Eleff combines published documents with seldom-seen archival sources in tracing Modern Orthodoxy as it developed into a structured movement, established its own institutions, and encountered critical events and issues—some that helped shape the movement and others that caused tension within it. A general introduction explains the rise of the movement and puts the texts in historical context. Brief introductions to each section guide readers through the documents of this new, dynamic Jewish expression.

An Unorthodox Match

An Unorthodox Match
Author: Naomi Ragen
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Total Pages: 350
Release: 2019-09-24
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 125016124X

An Unorthodox Match is a powerful and moving novel of faith, love, and acceptance, from author Naomi Ragen, the international bestselling author of The Devil in Jerusalem. California girl Lola has her life all set up: business degree, handsome fiancé, fast track career, when suddenly, without warning, everything tragically implodes. After years fruitlessly searching for love, marriage, and children, she decides to take the radical step of seeking spirituality and meaning far outside the parameters of modern life in the insular, ultraorthodox enclave of Boro Park, Brooklyn. There, fate brings her to the dysfunctional home of newly-widowed Jacob, a devout Torah scholar, whose life is also in turmoil, and whose small children are aching for the kindness of a womanly touch. While her mother direly predicts she is ruining her life, enslaving herself to a community that is a misogynistic religious cult, Lola’s heart tells her something far more complicated. But it is the shocking and unexpected messages of her new community itself which will finally force her into a deeper understanding of the real choices she now faces and which will ultimately decide her fate.

Becoming Eve

Becoming Eve
Author: Abby Stein
Publisher: Seal Press
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2019-11-12
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1580059171

The powerful coming-of-age story of an ultra-Orthodox child who was born to become a rabbinic leader and instead became a woman Abby Stein was raised in a Hasidic Jewish community in Brooklyn, isolated in a culture that lives according to the laws and practices of eighteenth-century Eastern Europe, speaking only Yiddish and Hebrew and shunning modern life. Stein was born as the first son in a dynastic rabbinical family, poised to become a leader of the next generation of Hasidic Jews. But Abby felt certain at a young age that she was a girl. She suppressed her desire for a new body while looking for answers wherever she could find them, from forbidden religious texts to smuggled secular examinations of faith. Finally, she orchestrated a personal exodus from ultra-Orthodox manhood to mainstream femininity-a radical choice that forced her to leave her home, her family, her way of life. Powerful in the truths it reveals about biology, culture, faith, and identity, Becoming Eve poses the enduring question: How far will you go to become the person you were meant to be?

Keep Your Wives Away from Them

Keep Your Wives Away from Them
Author: Miryam Kabakov
Publisher: North Atlantic Books
Total Pages: 194
Release: 2010-05-11
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1556438796

***WINNER, 2011 Golden Crown Literary Award - Anthology Reconciling queerness with religion has always been an enormous challenge. When the religion is Orthodox Judaism, the task is even more daunting. This anthology takes on that challenge by giving voice to genderqueer Jewish women who were once silenced—and effectively rendered invisible—by their faith. Keep Your Wives Away from Them tells the story of those who have come out, who are still closeted, living double lives, or struggling to maintain an integrated "single life" in relationship to traditional Judaism—personal stories that are both enlightening and edifying. While a number of films and books have explored the lives of queer people in Orthodox and observant Judaism, only this one explores in depth what happens after the struggle, when the real work of building integrated lives begins. The candor of these insightful stories in Keep Your Wives Away from Them makes the book appealing to a general audience and students of women’s, gender, and LGBTQ studies, as well as for anyone struggling personally with the same issue. Contributors include musician and writer Temim Fruchter, Professor Joy Ladin, writer Leah Lax, nurse Tamar Prager, and the pseudonymous Ex-Yeshiva Girl. Keep Your Wives Away from Them official website: http://www.keepyourwivesawayfromthem.com/

The Making of a Salafi Muslim Woman

The Making of a Salafi Muslim Woman
Author: Anabel Inge
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2017
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0190611677

Salafism, often called "Wahhabism," is widely seen as a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam that subjugates women, yet growing numbers of young British women, many of them converts or from less conservative Muslim backgrounds, are actively embracing it. With unprecedented access to Salafi women's groups in the UK, Anabel Inge provides the first in-depth account of their lives, probing the reasons for their conversion and their subsequent dilemmas and difficulties.

Tradition in a Rootless World

Tradition in a Rootless World
Author: Lynn Davidman
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 267
Release: 1991
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0520075455

"[Davidman's] rich ethnographic observations and lucid prose illuminate two of the more important aspects of modern religion generally: the changing role of women and the resurgence of traditional faith."—Robert Wuthnow, author of Meaning and Moral Order

Exodus

Exodus
Author: Deborah Feldman
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 235
Release: 2014-03-25
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1101603100

The author of the explosive New York Times bestselling memoir Unorthodox (now a Netflix limited series) chronicles her continuing journey as a single mother, an independent woman, and a religious refugee. In 2009, at the age of twenty-three, Deborah Feldman walked away from the rampant oppression, abuse, and isolation of her Satmar upbringing in Williamsburg, Brooklyn to forge a better life for herself and her young son. Since leaving, Feldman has navigated remarkable experiences: raising her son in the “real” world, finding solace and solitude in a writing career, and searching for love. Culminating in an unforgettable trip across Europe to retrace her grandmother’s life during the Holocaust, Exodus is a deeply moving exploration of the mysterious bonds that tie us to family and religion, the bonds we must sometimes break to find our true selves.

Hidden Heretics

Hidden Heretics
Author: Ayala Fader
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2022-04-05
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0691234485

"This book concerns a cohort of ultra-orthodox Jews based in the greater New York area who, while retaining membership and close familial and other ties with their strictly observant communities, seek out secular knowledge about the world on the down low (so to speak), both online and via in-person encounters. Ayala Fader conducted her ethnographic research in these rarified social circles for years, developing relationships of trust with the mostly young married men and women who have taken to clandestine methods to find alternative social spaces in which to question what it means to be ethical and what a life of self-fulfillment looks like. Fader's book reveals the stresses and strains that such "double-lifers" experience, including the difficulty these life choices inject into relationships with wives, husbands, and one's children. Not all of these "double-lifers" become atheists. Fader's interlocutors can be placed on a broad spectrum ranging from religiously observant but open-minded at one end to atheism on the other. The rabbinical leadership of these ultra-orthodox communities are well aware of this phenomenon and of how unfiltered internet access makes such alternative forms of seeking an ever-present temptation. (Some ultra-orthodox rabbis have been sounding the alarm for years, claiming that the internet represents more of a threat to community survival today than the Holocaust did in the last century.) Fader's book examines the institutional responses of ultra-orthodox communities to the double-lifers. These include what is typically referred to as a Torah-based type of "religious therapy" conducted by trained members of these communities who as therapists and "life coaches" blend elements of modern psychiatry with ultra-orthodoxy and "treat" troubling, potentially life-altering doubt and skepticism as symptoms of underlying emotional pathology"--