At first it was the word. In 2012, at the age of 26, Deborah (formerly Devoireh) Feldman (New York, 1986) published her story. On paper, it is the story of a woman who fled the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community in which she was born. With all that that means. He escaped from an archaic world closed in on himself in Brooklyn, New York, where women are educated and condemned to forget their bodies and where one of the commandments is to repopulate the world in response to the Nazi Holocaust. Her fate was a strange, confusing universe, and perhaps, just perhaps, free. His is an adventure against time; an effort to set a stopped clock in a mythical space where everything is given for the first time and forever. And yet,'Unorthodox. My true story ' , published now and finally by Lumen in Spanish, is much more than the chronicle of an escape. In reality, it is rather the detailed description of an encounter or, better, a reunion: that of a woman with her memory (her grandparents survived the ' Shoah '), that of a woman with her own voice, that of a woman with the liberating power of fiction, art, literature, the word. Netflix has made Feldman's slightly adulterated text in which Esty's character replaces Deborah herself reaches the size of the symbols, the logo, of the good suitable for quick consumption. But before, as always, it was the word; a precise, constant word, far from simplifying exoticisms and only pending its emancipatory power. Feldman receives us at her home in Berlin where she lives. It does it via zoom. Behind it, a diaphanous and clear space. And in the background, a pile of books that, could not be otherwise, accumulate more words.

Deborah Feldman.

His latest book not yet translated is titled 'Überbitten', which in Yiddish means reconciliation. I wonder if writing for you is fundamentally an act of reconciliation with your life, with your past, with your people ... The first act of reconciliation was made clear in my first book, the one that now reaches Spain. ' Unorthodox ' was an act of reconciliation between two personalities. I imagine that a part of me, what we could call the external personality, is the result of a tradition followed for many years. Then there is my inner self that developed in conflict with what I lived. As this part of me grew there came a time when there was no longer a reconciliation between the two parts, and then I fled, yes, I fled because I felt it was a fraud, that what I was forced to do in front of everyone was not really me. . But I imagine that when you pretend to be another person for so long, you are necessarily that other person in part. There is something that ended up being part of me and that you cannot completely eliminate. It was very unpleasant and even bitter to realize that you were someone you do not want to be, that you have not chosen to be. And that's where reconciliation comes in at many levels. There is a reconciliation between the past and the present. How can you live with such a heavy inheritance? And there is another reconciliation between me and my grandmother. Between what she suffered as a result of the Holocaust and the life that I lead now. You now live in Berlin where the Holocaust is present with all kinds of memories and especially with the great memorial next to Potsdamer Platz. How did you feel the first time you saw it? It's difficult to process. I will tell you a rather unpleasant anecdote. On one occasion I was with Shira Haas , the leading actress of the series. She told me that the first time she visited Berlin she stopped at the Holocaust memorial and found a man who was masturbating among the large concrete blocks. I was practicing a kind of anti-Semitic cruising . She got scared and ran away. It was completely blocked. He had not yet started production on the series and did not dare tell anyone. Until the day she told you ... Yes, she was waiting for the moment when she felt capable of telling someone. I think the anecdote describes the essence of the monument quite well. I do not understand. Yes, in its bombastic presence it tends to attract opposite and equally extreme reactions to it. Much attention is paid to the fact that people take 'selfies' continuously in such a solemn place. But that means something. It is problematic and its problematic nature somehow makes it authentic. We cannot understand the Holocaust monument for the same reason that it is difficult to understand the Holocaust itself. And that puzzlement is significant. Let's say that it represents our absolute impotence against History.

Hatred of the Jew coupled with industrial development led to the Holocaust. But it was not a new phenomenon.

It is my turn to ask him not so much about Holocaust denialism as about that feeling of nuanced recusal or comparative apology ("Other exterminations were worse and they are not talked about as much about them", they say) that one breathes on the extreme right now. Issues to which I spent time when I left the Orthodox community was getting acquainted with Western History. In the community in which I grew up the Holocaust was a specific event, but I soon learned that the persecution of the Jews comes from behind and, incidentally, began with the Spanish Inquisition. The Holocaust is distinguished from what happened before because the modernity brought about by the 20th century made extermination more effective. Hatred of the Jew coupled with industrial development led to what led. But it was not a new phenomenon. I was asking about the extreme right ... In this long-term historical analysis, you realize that Europe has been hanging for centuries on a pendulum that oscillates between two forces: the conservative and the progressive or emancipatory. The last decades have been guided by social advancement. That stopped and now it's the opposite movement ... but I think that, despite the noise, that movement is less and less intense ... For years he wrote a 'blog' called 'Hasidic Feminist'. To what extent are religion and feminism compatible? There is no religion in the world that is not dictated by men and in many cases against women. Men have made religion a patriarchal structure. But if you analyze it, the history of religions was not always like this. Judaism became misogynistic in the diaspora through the contact and absorption of values ​​from other beliefs. I think something similar happened with Christianity. But originally, Judaism attracted many women because they considered it to be a progressive belief. Nowadays, if you look at Christianity or Judaism it is impossible to separate them from their evident misogyny. But the question to ask is just the opposite: Is religion possible today without feminism? I think there should be no contradiction between feminism and religion. The problem is that religion has become a tool of patriarchy. Perhaps in the future that tool can be used appropriately. It is very common to see politicians with the Bible in hand. What does the recent image of Trump suggest in that attitude? I dislike that way of using religion for political purposes. I have suffered it for too long. Religion has now become corrupted in the modern world. I imagine there are people who are able to stay safe. I met a nun who was abused by a priest, was very aware of the corruption of the Church and, despite this, nothing she had suffered had destroyed her relationship with God. Experience has taught me that the individual relationship with God can be separated from institutionalized religion. Her story through 'Un<2FEMININE>' is a story of liberation and survival. I wonder if it is not a matter of freeing oneself from a religion, but of emancipating, more generally, from the rules imposed by an increasingly individualistic, narcissistic society ... In fact, my second book, ' Exodus ', stops to analyze the 'shock' that I suffered in the capitalist paradise in New York. His reading of everything he lived then was in biblical terms. I imagined myself in Sodom and Gomorrah, or in a kind of Tower of Babel. The 9/11 attacks were very symbolic. In my imagination it seemed like a punishment from God. It is very curious, because you see the same fanaticism in religious communities as in the search within capitalist society for fame, money and status regardless of dignity. They are two faces of the same coin.

It is very curious, because you see the same fanaticism in religious communities as in the search within capitalist society for fame, money and status

You don't feel the contradiction of becoming a consumer phenomenon on Netflix. I am not saying that Netflix is ​​the last god of this absurd consumerist religion in which we live, but almost.His reflection helps to understand the distance that goes from the book to the series. The protagonist of the series is not me; the one in the book, yes. Let's say that the platform turns life into myth and reality into consumable symbols. Anyway, the series has helped the book. I will tell you that my book would never have been published in Spanish if it were not for the series. Up to three times the translation into Spanish was rejected. Until Netflix appeared. It is a gratifying and bittersweet sensation at the same time. I imagine that, somehow, it has become a symbol of improvement for many people, for many women. Do you feel or weigh the responsibility of being an example for others? I only feel the responsibility towards myself; made a moral obligation to do the right thing. My book has been published in 20 different countries. This means that it has managed to transcend the barriers of culture, language and identity. Are you concerned that the book may be used with anti-Semitic intentions by the criticism it subjects to a particular creed of the Jewish religion? This is a concern that has always come to me from a theoretical point of view. My story is, above all, a feminist story, and the extreme xenophobic right is not interested in feminist stories, even if they can get ideological results from it. On the left side, something similar happens. They could identify with my story because it discusses religion, but the sect I come from is anti-Zionist and is against the State of Israel ... I'm not worth it either. I think my story is complex enough to escape ideological reductionism. When you go down into the details it is difficult to instrumentalize the text. At the end of the day, my story is one more consequence of the great trauma of the 20th century that we suffered and condemns us all. The only ones who instrumentalize me are those who have not read the book or seen the series and speak by hearsay. It usually happens. My book annoys the Jews who do not know or do not want to know anything about ultra-Orthodox communities because they say it gives them a bad image . The worst anti-Semitism is the one that maintains that the Jews are perfect and have to be represented perfectly and not like any other smoke. That is the heart of racism.

The worst anti-Semitism is the one that maintains that the Jews are perfect

Their old community is a community obsessed with the need to remember the Holocaust, not to forget it and that makes them live with it always present. I am thinking, for example, of Spain and the effort to forget, to turn the page, to its great trauma, the Civil War. Do you dare to draw parallels between the role of memory in both cases? Memory is the theme of my work and I am very interested in how each country's relationship with its past is. I like, for example, the work done in Normandy that tries to look at the postwar world from peace and human dignity. My experience tells me that memory education tends to stay on an institutional level, forgetting that what matters is how we assimilate memory in a much more personal sphere. The great institutional movements are very suspicious to me. I am very interested, for example, in the work of Jorge Semprún. I have discovered it in Europe and I think its merit is to transmit that the experience of persecution suffered by a few actually impacts all of us and our lives. About the entire society.

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