Netflix’s four-part dramatic TV-series Unorthodox is partly a true story, based on author Deborah Feldman’s memoir Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots, published in 2012. But when Alexa Karolinski and Anna Winger adapted the book into a TV-series, the three women all agreed to transform the story and make it partly fictitious. It became the story of a young woman, Esther “Esty” Shapiro, who is on a journey of self-discovery as she leaves the orthodox Hasidic Jewish community in New York to seek a new creative life as a musician in Berlin. We spoke to Deborah Feldman about the adaptation of her book into a TV show.

The TV-show is based on your book Unorthodox but it does not follow your life story completely. Was this a choice of yours and if so why?

It was a decision that we, Alexa Karolinski and I made early on. We talked about the idea of turning it into a series for years because we wanted to be 100 percent sure that this is what we wanted to do. We agreed that the story and series would divert from the story of the book and that she would go on a different path. The primary reason for that was my desire to have privacy in my current life.

You left the Hasidic community when you were 23. When did you write Unorthodox?

I started writing Unorthodox before I left, and I wrote it with one goal: to use the publicity that it would achieve as levity in a custody battle. So, I was not writing it under the ideal circumstances that writers normally have where they have the time and wait till they have perspective and reflection. I wrote it as it was happening and without knowing what the ending was and of course, the result was that my life was open to the public. It was necessary because it gave me power but it also took away the protection that anonymity gives each of us and while I am very proud of the book and what it has accomplished for me and the way it has changed the way we have conversations, I desired at one point to have my private life back. The life I lived after the book was published is private life and this was also clear for Alexa and her co-creator Anna Winger. They wanted the story of the character Esty to be different enough from my current life so people would not make the mistake of confusing me with her and seeing me in the street and thinking that they know my whole life story. When I go on reading tours and people meet me in person, they very often get emotional. They hug me and start to cry and tell me how their story has moved them. It is very lovely but it can also become pretty overwhelming and very intense. And can you imagine a story like Esty’s which is seen all over the world and then people seeing me in the street and thinking I am her. That is just very difficult for a writer to experience because writers tend to be more introverted. This was something that Anna was thinking about and she knew that if she was making a commercially successful project, it would be a too high price to pay.

What kind of thoughts did you have about fictionalizing your story?

We talked about how we would fictionalize the second part of Esty’s story and what happens when she decides to leave and actually leaves and a lot of the ideas that we came up with for Esty were based on several experiences. It was based on Anna and Alexa’s experiences in Berlin, but we also talked to many other people who had left, because in actuality the number of people who have left these communities in the last decade has gone up dramatically. Experts are estimating that 10 percent of the ultraorthodox worldwide have left or are in the process of leaving and we ended up working with many of these people. So we had consultants and actors on set who also came from this background and who also shared with us their experiences of leaving and I think in the end, what happens to Esty after she leaves is a kind of mythical and symbolic reflection of many stories of people who left. So it is not tied to one single experience but much more a representation of a cultural phenomenon.

Do you still see your life in Etsy’s character or by it being partly fictional – do you distance yourself from it?

I definitely see myself in her backstory because her backstory is based on what I consider the heart of my book. I believe it is a story about bodily female empowerment and so is the series. On the other hand, that is what makes the fictionalized part so interesting is that not only do I identify with it, but other people say the same thing. I spoke to other friends of mine who had left the community and asked them what they see when they see Esty and they said: ‘I see myself’. So all of my friends who left say this and I also, strangely enough, see myself in her. The details of the circumstances have changed but the emotions are the same. The conflicts are the same.

The book starts with your childhood, whereas the TV-show skips all this and goes straight to the point when Esty is a young woman escaping to Berlin. What do you feel about this choice?

You have two other factors at play here. You have artistic freedom. Anna and Alexa are Jewish women in their own right, whom I deeply respect. I knew when I trusted them with the project that I needed to give them this artistic freedom. Unorthodox the series is their baby and not mine. That is the thing about making art. They have made it with authenticity and I feel I made the right decision by making it with these women. There is also a very simple rule, which I think many people working in this field understand. Scenes in books don’t necessarily work as scenes on screen. “Unorthodox” the book is about the interior thoughts of a character and the building up of doubt and the development of conflicting selves. They took this part of the book and made it work in visual media. They did an amazing job making a complex and authentic visual narrative very accessible to an audience from different cultures. They have a completely different goal and I think they have achieved that goal.

When you saw the series, was there anything that you learned from it about your own experience that you had not realized before?

There were some interesting moments in the series where Esty is very good at sticking up for herself. She is shown in the series as finding her voice after she leaves. But in a way, you could say that she is already finding her voice from within. There is a scene where she is alone with her husband and she explodes and has an intense monologue and it was a moment that I never had in that way myself. I had little moments here and there where I protested, but the way she let it all out was a very empowering thing to see and it shows that her character already had a voice way before she broke away, and being confronted with that reminds me of ways that I would have been strong and there was a reckoning in the gap between fiction and reality and art and life.

When you watched the series, were there any moments that were particularly emotional for you to watch?

I think the third episode where you realize that all of the hope that she had about her life after marriage was being destroyed. That was an experience of reliving or rather being confronted with a difficult time that I had not been dealing with since writing the book.

What are your thoughts about the actress, Shira Haas, who plays a version of you?

I know Shira personally and I love her. When Alexa and Anna mentioned her as the lead actress, I knew exactly who she was, because I had seen her in a role that could be considered similar to the role of Esty. But here she played someone who is embracing religion rather than turning away from it. It is still a story of a woman trying to find her role in a community on her own terms and she played that role with a tremendous intensity and you connect to her. She is a very unique actress. I got to know her in Berlin and today we are friends and I see our relationship as a kind of sisterhood and she told me once that it is rare in itself to be given a role based on a real person and for that person to still be alive and them 10 years apart. So I was basically her peer and it was very intense and scary for her. But she put everything and her soul into that role and made it hers – she ate it, breathed it, and slept it. I think that she created a character with her acting that has changed the world. The world will not be the same after Esty.

You were 23 years old when you left the Hasidic community. Have you had any response from the community concerning the book and the TV-series?

When the book was published there was a lot of outrage because I crossed a line. There have been people who had left before but I touched on certain taboo subjects that no one had touched upon before. This made them very angry. They quickly realized that their anger was helping to sell the book because people would pay attention to that anger and say: “what’s in that book?” So they learned from this experience by not participating. But we get letters from people in the community, who are inspired by it and touched by it.

You said in the book that you were hungry for power to own yourself. Do you feel that this hunger has been satisfied today?

Yes, I do. That is the one goal that I have achieved: self-ownership. That was something I always desired without fully understanding what it was that I desired. There is one thing that you can say about my life within the community and that is that in a world like that, you cannot belong to yourself. To me the secret to happiness has always been belonging to yourself and today because I have achieved that goal, I don’t really have much more to accomplish because the most important thing has been accomplished.

Do you still identify as Jewish and do you believe in God?

I don’t think a lot about the belief in a God, because I am an agnostic, which is whether there is a God or not is not going to have a really big impact on my life. I do very strongly identify as being culturally and intellectually Jewish in the sense that I feel very connected to the heritage of Jewish art and literature. I feel very connected to the Jewish art scene in Berlin and to women like Alexa and Anna. I am very proud and hopeful of this new inclusion of Jewish stories in mainstream culture. For a long time Jewish people were not comfortable sharing narratives that would be considered more marginal in mainstream culture, so the fact that we can and do entrust a mainstream audience with a story like this one really is a zeitgeist for drawing the marginal into the mainstream. We are now able to see the universality in them and this makes me very hopeful for our times.