All Who Go Do Not Return

February 9, 2015
When Deen, a former member of the Skverer Hasids, realizes he has lost his faith, he must admit that he no longer belongs in the only world he has ever known. Deen's parents were âreturnees" who came from secular upbringings and educations, raising their children in an observant but also more enlightened household than those in his Brooklyn community. Deen seeks out the Skverers for his studies, but early on there are signs of the troubles to come: a rebellious attitude that leads to a physical altercation with a teacher and two expulsions. Back on the straight and narrow, he enters into an unwelcome arranged marriage at 18 and struggles with typical concerns like loving a stranger and getting a job. He raises doubts and questions and needs to know what's outside the strict confines of his sheltered and scrutinized existence. Consumed by paranoia at being found out a fraud, he continues with pretense and deception. When he is branded a heretic, he finally must decide what path to take. It is a heartbreaking read as Deen fights to reconcile his identity and love for his family with his loss of faith in God. But it is also one of great courage and hope as Deen aspires to live openly and without fear for the first time.

January 1, 2015
A former member of an extremely insular Hasidic sect tells his story of becoming curious about the outside world-and the consequences of that curiosity. Unpious magazine founding editor Deen was raised in the Hasidic sect known as "the Skverers," an offshoot of Orthodox Judaism that shuns the outside world. Radio, TV, newspapers, the Internet-these are all gateways that, once opened, let forth a flood of sinful thought and action into one's heart. The author knows the story of how New Square, in Rockland County, New York, came to be and the travails faced by those seeking to establish it; he knows that even among strict, rigid devotees of Judaism, New Square is considered a place where the real fanaticism takes place. Like some who went before him, Deen's intellectual curiosity led him to pursuits considered borderline sacrilegious. As a young boy, he was scolded for reading Then Again, Maybe I Won't by Judy Blume, and as an 11-year-old, he would sneak off to read Hardy Boys mysteries. Turning 13, however, meant putting those texts behind him and focusing more on religious studies. Deen did so, but his interest in the world outside New Square followed him into adulthood, marriage and children. In equal measure with his interest in how others lived was a growing dissatisfaction with some of the practices within the Skverers-how on one hand, the elders would speak of the importance of offspring, but when Deen's children arrived, it was treated as irrelevant. When instructed as a teacher to fudge the progress reports-to ensure continued approval that they were teaching, along with religion, the arithmetic and reading required-to the government, the author felt this untruth to be a betrayal. In this moving book, Deen lays bare his difficult, muddled wrestling with his faith, the challenges it posed to everything he thought he knew about himself, and the hard-won redemption he eventually found.

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February 15, 2015

Writing was Deen's way out of Hasidism and into secular life, first by early blogging experiments and then with unpious.com, a site dedicated to prose by former Hasidic and ultra-Orthodox Jews. This memoir, based on those narratives, follows Deen's journey from belief into atheism. Hasidic communities tend to be insular, and its members often lack a secular education and English-speaking ability. The threat of ostracism by family makes leaving a gut-wrenching decision, as Deen painfully describes here. The author initially found the joyful spirituality of Hasidic worship satisfying, but he could not believe unquestioningly and found his community stifling, which led to exploration of the more appealing outside world. The work jumps back and forth in time, and it eventually is obvious that Deen's desire to leave was present early on, but suppressed for many years. Deen is not always a sympathetic character, yet he delves into the challenges of his past with such careful honesty that we can forgive him. VERDICT A solid memoir that will be of interest to fans of that genre, as well as to readers curious about Judaism and Jewish life.--Margaret Heller, Loyola Univ. Chicago Libs.

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 15, 2015
Deen grew up in the Hasidic world, though he learned later that his parents had spent their youth as hippies. Perhaps that unconventionality was passed down to him because he always had a rebellious streak. Still, he chose to join the Skverers, one of the stricter sects, and, as expected, he married at 18, having only met his wife for a few moments before his betrothal. In a society where it's a given that all questions have answers in religious writings, a man who still has questions is looked at askance. And when he tries to find answers by turning on a radio, or a computer, or by visiting a library, the insider will soon become the outsider. Deen's story is weighted toward the time of his life when he still lived as an ultra-Orthodox Jew, and he has little good to say about the experience. The final section, where he tries to navigate the modern world, seems slighted and may leave readers with questions about how he managed, though the anguish of slowly losing his five children to their community is forcefully recounted. A clash of cultures made fascinating and personal.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)