Unchosen: The Hidden Lives of Hasidic Rebels-Quality Guarantee

Description

An exploration of Hasidic Jews struggling to live withintheir restrictive communities—and, in some cases, to carve out a newlife beyond them

When Hella Winstonbegan talking with Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn for her doctoraldissertation in sociology, she was surprised to be covertly introducedto Hasidim unhappy with their highly restrictive way of life andsometimes desperately struggling to escape it. Unchosen tells thestories of these “rebel” Hasidim, serious questioners who long forgreater personal and intellectual freedom than their communities allow.

She meets is Malky Schwartz, who grew up in a Lubavith sect in Brooklyn, and started Footsteps, Inc., an organization that helps ultra-Orthodox Jews who are considering or have already left their community. There is Yossi, a young man who, though deeply attached to the Hasidicculture in which he was raised, longed for a life with fewerrestrictions and more tolerance. Yossi’s efforts at making such a life,however, were being severely hampered by his fourth grade English andmath skills, his profound ignorance of the ways of the outside world,and the looming threat that pursuing his desires would almost certainlylead to rejection by his family and friends. Then she met Dini, a youngwife and mother whose decision to deviate even slightly from Hasidicstandards of modesty led to threatening phone calls from anonymous men,warning her that she needed to watch the way she was dressing if shewanted to remain a part of the community. Someone else introducedWinston to Steinmetz, a closet bibliophile worked in a small Judaicastore in his community and spent his days off anxiously evadingdiscovery in the library of the Conservative Jewish TheologicalSeminary, whose shelves contain non-Hasidic books he is forbidden toread but nonetheless devours, often several at a sitting. There wereothers still who had actually made the wrenching decision to leave theircommunities altogether.

In her new Preface, Winston discusses the passionate reactions the bookhas elicited among Hasidim and non-Hasidim alike.

Named one of Publishers Weekly‘s Ten Best Religion Books of 2005.

Honorable Mention in the 2012 Casey Medals for Meritorious Journalism