All Who Go Do Not Return

A moving and revealing exploration of ultra-Orthodox Judaism and one man's loss of faith

Shulem Deen grew up in a strict Hasidic community, where religious law dictates daily life, interaction with outsiders is discouraged, and a boy's education focuses on the Torah and the Talmud. His marriage at eighteen is arranged and several children soon follow. In his twenties, while struggling to support his growing family by working odd jobs, Deen begins to question the authority of the rebbe. His first transgression—turning on the radio—is small, but his curiosity soon leads him to forbidden television and movies, the shelves of the public library, and later to a lively online world of nonbelievers. He is eventually accused of heresy and expelled from New Square, the all-Hasidic village less than an hour from New York City.
In All Who Go Do Not Return, Deen bravely traces his harrowing loss of faith and community, while offering an illuminating...