A Satmar woman takes Deborah Feldman to task for allegations

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Tablepoetry

Wed, Feb 29 2012, 9:36 am

saw - I didn't read the book and I only skimmed this article, but I agree - it's ridiculous and cliched to brand anyone who goes OTD as 'materialitic'. IME secular people, and that includes OTD ones, are no more materialistic than frum ones. You have materialists in every camp, whether you define materialism as wanting 'things' or as general gashmiut. And you have spiritual ones in every camp.

celestial

Wed, Feb 29 2012, 10:14 am

How come soho is overrun with Satmar women, and they are so very into everything being designer?
I thought this was materialism incarnate!

saw50st8

Wed, Feb 29 2012, 10:26 am

ChossidMom wrote:

Dunno. Seems to me that the opposite of spirituality is materialism. Maybe Gashmius is a better word. Doesn't necessarily mean a person wants lots of "stuff". Just means they're choosing the material and tangible over the spiritual and intangible. Hard to imagine that a Jewish girl eating seafood and bacon is still "spiritual", kwim?

It may be against halacha but it's not gashmius. I think this is rhetoric often used against those who go OTD. She sold her jewelry to be able to leave.

We pretend that when we do something its for avodas hashem. But when someone goes OTD then we ascribe terrible statements to them.

LibraMommy

Wed, Feb 29 2012, 10:28 am

I don't think going OTD has anything to do with trading spirtituality for materialism. It's relieving oneself (of the burden) of being religious due to a lack or loss of belief in it and thinking it's not worth it.

MrsDash

Wed, Feb 29 2012, 11:14 am

DrMom wrote:

My thoughts:

Not a badly written article. The author makes some valid points. Some criticisms:

1. The author is anonymous ("Rachel"). Why? She says she (or rather her sister) know DF. I suppose I will believe her, but we don't really have any more reason to believe her than we do DF. For all we know, the woman who wrote this piece is not even Satmar. It could be anybody. This anonymity damages her credibility.

2. She makes some claims about how DF lived and what she was thinking after she moved away from Williamsburg. How does the author know this?

3. She makes it sound utterly impossible for a Satmar bride to not understand what happens on one's wedding night. I have seen several posts here from women recounting their utter cluelessness and poor kallah class preparation, so it seems feasible that DF could easily have been a clueless kallah. Also, having limited access to a library does not mean one checks out books on anantomy or intimacy. One has to know what to look for.

4. I don't know what a chassidish bathing suit looks like, but I know that nowadays there are modest swimsuits for Orthodox clientelle that do include long sleeves and a skirt over long shorts. I don't know if they made those when DF was growing up.

5. I do think that her point about DF taking her particular experiences and generalizing are valid. It is easy to see how audiences seeing her interviews can think that her experiences are true for all Orthodox Jews.

I happen to know quite a few individuals who were somewhat confused, and clueless in this department. Some weren't even Jewish. They were socially awkward, or very sheltered. Why is it so inconceivable for people to think otherwise. They have NO clue about others upbringing or what's going on in another persons head.

All these people coming out claiming to "know" her in real life- If they think they know everything, because they happened to be neighbors, or had siblings in her class, they are sorely mistaken. And quite frankly for anyone to say they "know" the ins, and outs of anyone, because of what they see on the outside or what they think they "see" on the inside, are acting a little self righteous. No one can possibly know everything they "claim" to know unless they were a VERY close friend or Deborah herself. Something can be written as well as Shakespeare, but I'm still not convinced.

Maya

Wed, Feb 29 2012, 11:28 am

Quote:

4. I don't know what a chassidish bathing suit looks like, but I know that nowadays there are modest swimsuits for Orthodox clientelle that do include long sleeves and a skirt over long shorts. I don't know if they made those when DF was growing up.

The modest bathing suits of today with the long skirts and long sleeves are something new. And it's made for public areas such as beaches, not private swimming pools.

The ones that DF, and I, grew up with had very short sleeves, a skirt that reached mid-thigh, and was not made of such heavy fabric. It was lighter, very much like a bathing suit.

chavamom

Wed, Feb 29 2012, 1:28 pm

saw50st8 wrote:

ChossidMom wrote:

saw50st8 wrote:

Eh, I was underwhelmed.

One line that drove me crazy "she shed her light of spirituality … in exchange for the darkness of materialism."

THat's a statement often thrown around with people who go OTD and its largely not true (IME anyway).

I liked that statement and IMHO is utterly and completely true. I thought the article was articulate and well written.

What makes her materialistic?

Selling your soul to make a buck using slander to promote your book? I thought that was what the author meant NOT that everyone OTD is materialistic.

Last edited by chavamom on Wed, Feb 29 2012, 1:33 pm; edited 1 time in total

chavamom

Wed, Feb 29 2012, 1:31 pm

Tablepoetry wrote:

The swimsuits with pants and a dress? I often see them, either very frum women or Arab women wear them here in Israel.

Those are of very recent invention - more recent than the "exerskirt" even - and are used by women who want to go to a beach where they might be seen or go on a hike in the Banyas. They are almost unheard of in the US except for people who bring them back from Israel.

saralem

Wed, Feb 29 2012, 1:41 pm

wow--terrific response! too the point and lacking defensiveness, in my opinion. this whole thing is just awful--if someone has a "bad" experience in life and decides to move on, why write a book that disparages a whole community, and actually a whole people? see a therapist instead and work it out. Oh, but that wouldn't make her any money, would it?

718

Wed, Feb 29 2012, 3:29 pm

celestial wrote:

How come soho is overrun with Satmar women, and they are so very into everything being designer?
I thought this was materialism incarnate!

OMG I love this post!!!!

I think its necessary to come out with counter argument but she took a lot of truth and grossly embelished them to sell her story. So while we can disprove the extreme exaggeration , the underlying issues in our community are still there.

Lets forget about df for a moment. Our systems failures pushes these children away all on its own. Not everyone knows how to leave the bad behind.

Arcy

Wed, Feb 29 2012, 5:08 pm

who changed the subject of this thread?
I had it titled as "A Female Member of the Satmar Community in Williamsburg..."

tweety99

Mon, Mar 05 2012, 4:44 pm

excellent article!

WriterMom

Mon, Mar 05 2012, 5:03 pm

chavamom wrote:

Selling your soul to make a buck using slander to promote your book? I thought that was what the author meant NOT that everyone OTD is materialistic.

It's funny that you insist on using the word slander while saying something nasty about someone else that you can't substantiate.

This word ... I do not think it means what you think it means.

WriterMom

Mon, Mar 05 2012, 5:03 pm

Arcy wrote:

who changed the subject of this thread?
I had it titled as "A Female Member of the Satmar Community in Williamsburg..."

Heavens, "female" isn't a tznius word at all. Better to say "someone of the feminine persuasion."

Arcy

Mon, Mar 05 2012, 6:49 pm

WriterMom wrote:

Arcy wrote:

who changed the subject of this thread?
I had it titled as "A Female Member of the Satmar Community in Williamsburg..."

Heavens, "female" isn't a tznius word at all. Better to say "someone of the feminine persuasion."

lol, What does that even mean?

chavamom

Mon, Mar 05 2012, 9:30 pm

WriterMom wrote:

chavamom wrote:

Selling your soul to make a buck using slander to promote your book? I thought that was what the author meant NOT that everyone OTD is materialistic.

It's funny that you insist on using the word slander while saying something nasty about someone else that you can't substantiate.

This word ... I do not think it means what you think it means.

Stop it. I've seen plenty of her interviews and yes, I am quite sure what "slander" means. There are plenty of quotes out there to substantiate it.

WriterMom

Mon, Mar 05 2012, 9:36 pm

chavamom wrote:

WriterMom wrote:

chavamom wrote:

Selling your soul to make a buck using slander to promote your book? I thought that was what the author meant NOT that everyone OTD is materialistic.

It's funny that you insist on using the word slander while saying something nasty about someone else that you can't substantiate.

This word ... I do not think it means what you think it means.

Stop it. I've seen plenty of her interviews and yes, I am quite sure what "slander" means. There are plenty of quotes out there to substantiate it.

You really don't get it.

You're aware that slander can result in substantial judgment if the slander-ee sues, correct? And also that publishers and major media networks have many lawyers whose job entails ensuring that they don't print or broadcast something actionable, right? I don't know why Deborah Feldman gets your Irish up so badly, but it's unpleasant seeing you get so rotated when you normally are judicious and able to write off the silly stuff.

I'm not asking you to believe Deborah Feldman, I'm asking you to consider the fact that her publisher and the shows that interview her are not in the business of setting themselves up to be sued. You disagree with her, fine; but don't stoop to the level that you're accusing her (without substantiation) of reaching.

WriterMom

Mon, Mar 05 2012, 9:38 pm

Arcy wrote:

WriterMom wrote:

Arcy wrote:

who changed the subject of this thread?
I had it titled as "A Female Member of the Satmar Community in Williamsburg..."

Heavens, "female" isn't a tznius word at all. Better to say "someone of the feminine persuasion."

lol, What does that even mean?

Two generations ago it was considered rude in WASP circles to call a "good Jew" a Jew, because the word was tantamount to an insult, so the polite workaround was "of the Jewish persuasion."

A (very tepid) joke. Funny only because this is a website that routinely censors medically accurate words, lest someone's pristine neshama be forever soiled by learning that it's not only called "down there."

chavamom

Mon, Mar 05 2012, 9:47 pm

WriterMom wrote:

chavamom wrote:

WriterMom wrote:

chavamom wrote:

Selling your soul to make a buck using slander to promote your book? I thought that was what the author meant NOT that everyone OTD is materialistic.

It's funny that you insist on using the word slander while saying something nasty about someone else that you can't substantiate.

This word ... I do not think it means what you think it means.

Stop it. I've seen plenty of her interviews and yes, I am quite sure what "slander" means. There are plenty of quotes out there to substantiate it.

No, I more than "get it". What you don't get is that I disagree with you AND think that Simon and Schuster didn't vet this project very well. Do you not realize that there is an entire genre of false "memoirs" that got past a publisher's "fact checker"? Minimally, their fact checking was extremely poor in this instance. What gets my knickers in a knot is frum women who jump to believe this cock and bull story and defend it as if it were Torah miSinai. Talk about "dan lekaf zechus" turned on its head.

PS - the term "slander" or "slanderous" does not have to mean legal slander. I also think proving that an author had "slandered" a community in a court of law would be difficult. But what word would you use to describe "publicly making a community look foolish, dangerous and harmful up to and including murder"?

FeigK

Mon, Mar 05 2012, 9:52 pm

http://www.frumsatire.net/2012.....ruth/

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