Shulem Deen

Deen’s 2015 National Jewish Book Award winning memoir is a fascinating story told with great sensitivity. He succeeds in explaining one man’s harrowing battle against faith. Deen was brought up in a world where questions were perceived as dangerous. His first transgression, turning on the radio, was small but it sparked his curiosity. It eventually led him to the library and later to the internet, seeking a feverous inquiry into the tenets of his religious beliefs. Deen fights to show more reconcile his identity and love for his family with his loss of faith in God. Only someone who has been expelled from a community could recount so vividly and viscerally what sort of pain comes with this type of substantial loss. show less

I'm fascinated by religious groups, especially the fundamentalist ones, as I are up in one myself. This one features a particularly strict Hasidic Jewish sect. Deen, the author and narrator, finds himself questioning everything he's believed after some exposure to the outside world. These are folks who ride a bus with a tarp hanging in the aisle so that the men can't see the women; folks whose marriages are arranged and their sexual encounters staggered; folks who are controlled and show more manipulated into pretzels. Well, Deen finally snapped, giving into to some of the rebelliousness and questioning that had been leaking from him for years. One of his first stops is the Internet, where he connects with others questioning, and eventually starts what became a famous blog about questioning Jewish tradition. That stop also eventually gets him excommunicated, bounced from and barred permanently from his community. That community then begins working on his ex-wife and kids until they abandon him, as well. It's sad, and inspiring - inspiring because this guy never stopped asking questions and learning - that's a recipe for actually finding a way to a spirituality that doesn't depend on religious contortion and corruption.

5 bones!!!!!
Highly Recommended!!!!! show less

I've had a growing curiosity about Orthodox Judaism (as I first discussed in my review here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1785091630) from my continued professional proximity to the frum community. I have friend who's prone to the same flights of curiosity that I am and we sometimes egg each other deeper into bizarre obsessions: we've spent far too many Monday nights browsing the Orthodox fringe of the internet. Far from my previous misguided notion that "Lubavitch" was a synonym show more for Chasid, I've come to learn that there are dozens of different Chasidic groups, each with their own flavor, mores and mysticism. Shulem Deen joined the strictest and most isolated of them, the Skvers.

This is truly Judaism as I do not know it. A world where children can barely read and write English; teenagers marry people that they've met for only a dozen minutes and books of all stripes are looked at askance unless they're literally siddurim or one of the accepted commentaries. The idea that people could pass into this life as a baal teshuva, or pass back out and come OTD (with good enough English to write a memoir) is basically unthinkable.

But beyond the voyeurism of getting to see a slice of life in the punnily named New Square, I found Deen's memoir haunting. I found his relationship with his wife, Gitty, unspeakably sad. I was touched by his insight into the experiences of his estranged children. And I was moved by his struggle to find a place for himself in Judaism.

What really struck me was the subsistence life Deen was given -- his bare kollel stipend, struggling to make ends meet over a perpetually expanding family, the disdain he received for leaving the kollel. And the emotional subsistence: the distinct limitations on with whom he could interact, what he could do for leisure, what he could do for work; every interaction within his marriage carefully scripted. I found it terribly sad, and I found Deen's writing very evocative of his confinement.

I got into a fight with someone on the internet, who said he wished American Jewry were more Israeli: "where the synagogue you don't go to is Orthodox." Deen's memoir made me think of that -- to me, non-Orthodox Judaism is this beautiful place, where there's room for a spiritual and Jewish life, while simultaneously exploring any range of beliefs about the existence of G-d, and gender and math and secular jobs. It made me sad that for Deen his ability to have an identity and existence meant abandoning that.

OTD memoirs are in vogue lately, but it's clear there's a reason that this is the most famous -- Deen is a truly gifted writer and his talent with words is matched only by the depth of his soul-baring introspection. show less

Deen is either a phenomenal writer or he lucked out with an exceptional editor. If All Who Go Do Not Return was only the story of Deen’s life as a Chasid, from childhood to adulthood, from being single through marriage, to father of 5, it would be compelling.

What makes this book uniquely forceful is Deen’s loss of faith over many years, his reasoning, the deprivation he felt without the familiar religious fervor with which his life was immersed, and his efforts to recommit himself to show more the stringent requirements of the cloistered Skyver sect.

But years of learning the truth about the wide world through reading, internet research, watching television and movies, as well as working in the real world with non-religious Jews and non-Jews effectively convinced this bright, sensitive and thoughtful man that he had to move his life from reticence and suppression to enlightenment and reality.

Deen describes the painful and long process of leaving a non-forgiving insular, nearly autonomous community, and building a new life with limited access to his children in heart-breaking detail.

Sad but life-affirming. Excellent read. show less