Deborah Feldman is an American, Israeli, Jewish writer living in Berlin, Germany. Her most recent novel, Unorthodox, is the fictionalized story of her 20 years of estrangement from her Hasidic roots and her eventual escape to Israel. She served as a translator and foreign editor for many authors during the period of her career. Her work has appeared in some of the best Jewish literary magazines such as Tablet, Jewish Book News, Crown Publishing, City Journal, Haifa Review, Book Review, Forward, Tablet, Ha’Shiuv and others. Her novels have won several awards including the American Book Prize, the Compton Crocker lifetime achievement award, the National Book Award, the Satellite Award for Young Women and others. Her most famous novel, however, was turned into a feature-length film starring Audrey Hepburn and George Peppard as her loyal companions in the Mandatory period.
According to the profile of Debbie Feldman, age was something of a non-issue for her. She once said, “age does not affect me at all. I feel much younger than my chronological age.” When asked about her height, she said, “I’m not exactly sure. Maybe six foot, although that would be very sad.”
Her nationality and her national background did not seem to play as major a role in how she wrote or the direction in which her stories were taking. According to a bio-pic of Feldman on Facebook, she had “been fascinated by Jewish culture since childhood. I imagine that my family’s Jewish heritage gave rise to my interest in Jewish literature. Possibly, my grandparents were Jewish but I doubt it, since my father, who was not Jewish, was always adamant that I should turn to the Jews for my knowledge of their language and customs.”