In a memoir of his life in New Square, Shulem Deen tells about leaving a tight-knit ḥasidic community and discovering the outside world. Jessica Kasmer-Jacobs writes in her review:
[A]s the years pass, [Deen] wonders more and more: “Does God exist? Does our faith really contain the universe’s essential truths?” Desperate for guidance, he finds no salve for his growing doubts in the community’s leaders. If anything, he is treated with disdain by those he hoped might offer help. “The evasiveness that characterized so many of the responses,” he writes, “. . . suggested that the answers were a tangled spaghetti of sophistry meant to obfuscate rather than illuminate.” But in a village so small, word travels fast. Mr. Deen’s façade crumbles as his neighbors whisper about what books he reads and wonder whether he prays on the Sabbath.
Mr. Deen’s curiosity grows as quickly as his expanding family. In his early twenties, already the father of two children, he begins sneaking off to the children’s section of the nearby public library, slowly expanding his limited education with touches of the “new world.” From his perch on a tiny orange chair, Mr. Deen leafs through the pages of the World Book Encyclopedia with “heady delight.” . . . He starts listening to the radio in his car and reading newspapers. His wife grows uneasy, worried that her husband “would not be content to transgress alone, but would try to get her to join . . . and reel in the kids.”
Read more on Wall Street Journal: http://www.wsj.com/articles/book-review-all-who-go-do-not-return-by-shulem-deen-1428874330