On the Bookshelf: Unorthodox by Deborah Feldman

Holy cats, did I happen upon a great book.

I honestly cannot remember where I bought it. Do you have this problem? Buying books and hoarding them, stacking them up in your house, by your bed? Compulsively making lists of what you want to read? Purchasing them and then forgetting the time and place because everything else ceases to matter when you’ve brought it home and have smelled the pages?

I. Am. El. Weirdo.

So first I smelled the pages (check!) and then I read this:

Feldman is a young woman from Brooklyn who grew up in an isolated and conservative Hasidic Jewish community. I knew a bit about Hasidism but this book is so intimate, so beautifully written, such a can’t-look-away glimpse into a world relatively close to mine but eons away. I ate it up, all the while marveling at this woman’s courage and at how legalism and rejection of grace can take many, many forms.

Worth a read, for sure. Plus the pages smell awesome.

Click here to buy Unorthodox.