Photo copyright George Baier Books by and about Jews who leave Orthodoxy have been around for years now — centuries, really — but in 2014 they reached a critical mass. With new memoirs by Leah Vincent and Deborah Feldman, an academic study by Lynn Davidman, and scores of essays, articles, films, profiles and trend pieces,…
Leah Vincent, 32, became the new face of the burgeoning ex-Orthodox community this year with the publication of her feted memoir, “Cut Me Loose: Sin and Salvation After My Ultra-Orthodox Girlhood.” Vincent is just one of several formerly Orthodox authors to tell their stories in recent books. But in addition to describing her own experiences,…
When I recently wrote my memoir of leaving ultra-Orthodoxy, I spent days ravaged by sobbing fits, debilitating chest pain, and migraines as I reencountered the trauma my 17-year-old self had experienced after I was pushed out of my yeshivish family for my rebellion. Shaken, I was fearful that when I went even further back to…
Joan Roth In her new memoir “Maybe Not Such a Good Girl: Reflections on Rupture and Return,” Susan Reimer-Torn chronicles her return to Jewish life in New York after years of living as a formerly-Orthodox woman in France. Elissa Strauss spoke with Reimer-Torn about freedom, healing and what the current generation of formerly-religious writers like…
When she was 17 years old, Leah Vincent, a young Orthodox woman from Pittsburgh, found herself living alone in a tiny basement apartment in Brooklyn. She was estranged from her parents and 10 siblings, socially isolated, and living on a low-wage diet of grilled cheese sandwiches and ketchup. Desperate for company, she sought the friendship…
Leah Vincent’s new memoir, “Cut Me Loose: Sin and Salvation After My Ultra-Orthodox Girlhood,” has a happy ending. But the rest of the book has a different tone. Born Leah Kaplan, Vincent grew up in Pittsburgh, the daughter of a prominent yeshivish (black hat) rabbi. She was one of 11 children in a household she…
If you are a gay or lesbian young person, then “It Gets Better.” But if you a Haredi, Hasidic or Yeshivish Jew yearning to leave your ultra-Orthodox community, then “It Gets Besser.” Taking a cue from LGBT Orthodox Jews who are increasingly taking pride in who they are and staking claim in the Jewish community,…
‘Protection’ by Leah Vincent A photo of a woman wrapped in phylacteries might not seem very bold after Leonard Nimoy’s “Shekhina” project. But to many of the artists at the opening of a new art exhibit called “All in the Eye,” a photograph of a woman adorned with tallit and tefillin, eye to the camera…
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