Leah Vin­cent is a writer and activist. In addi­tion to writ­ing for var­i­ous pub­li­ca­tions, includ­ing The Huff­in­g­ton Post and The Jew­ish Dai­ly For­ward, she is an advo­cate for reform with­in ultra-Ortho­doxy and for the empow­er­ment of for­mer ultra-Ortho­dox Jews seek­ing a self-deter­mined life. Her mem­oir, Cut Me Loose: Sin and Sal­va­tion After My Ultra-Ortho­dox Girl­hood, will be pub­lished by Nan A. Talese on Jan­u­ary 21st. She will be blog­ging here all week for Jew­ish Book Coun­cil and MyJew­ish­Learn­ing.

When a for­mer ultra-Ortho­dox Jew pub­licly reveals her sto­ry, she often faces fero­cious attacks from her com­mu­ni­ty of ori­gin who will claim that she is ​“crazy” and a liar. As a for­mer ultra-Ortho­dox writer and activist, I’ve expe­ri­enced some of this back­lash on blogs and online cha­t­rooms, but I received my most pub­lic dose of it when I appeared on Katie Couric’s talk show last spring to share a bit about my life and pro­mote the work of Foot­steps, an orga­ni­za­tion that empow­ers for­mer ultra-Ortho­dox Jews. 

The Katie pro­duc­er called me the day before the tap­ing, fran­tic. She had con­tact­ed my father for a counter-state­ment to my recount­ing of my par­ents’ aban­don­ment and the dif­fi­cult years I went through after that. ​“It is clear to us,” my father’s state­ment said, ​“that she (Leah) does not (or per­haps is not always able to) sep­a­rate her imag­in­ings from the facts. The alle­ga­tions con­tained in your email are sim­ply false, every sin­gle one … Come what may, we will con­tin­ue to love her always.” (His love, of course, mov­ing him to issue this state­ment, but not to con­tact­ing me after the birth of my child two years ago, or since.) 

The pro­duc­er was afraid that per­haps, despite my exten­sive prep with her, I was, in fact, a delu­sion­al liar. I direct­ed her to my broth­er, who con­firmed my account and shared the sto­ry of his own, sim­i­lar, experiences.

Many of my friends who leave ultra-Ortho­doxy have faced this type of per­son­al attack from fam­i­ly, for­mer friends, for­mer rab­bis, and inter­net trolls. With the pub­li­ca­tion of my mem­oir, I expect a fresh and heat­ed batch of claims that I am crazy and that I am a liar. There is a grain of truth in these accu­sa­tions. If ​“crazy” means expe­ri­ences with psy­chol­o­gists and psy­chi­a­trists, I have, as my mem­oir recounts, spent time on a psych ward. I don’t lie, in my mem­oir, but I do, as I note in the book, work with­in the con­ven­tions of the genre. My book is not a mul­ti-vol­ume inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ism essay on my entire exis­tence; it explores one nar­ra­tive thread from a vibrant life. As I state in the open­ing pages, “[s]ome events have been com­pressed or rearranged in time to more con­cise­ly con­vey my expe­ri­ence” and “[n]ames and iden­ti­fy­ing details have been altered.”

I’m weary of the insults that will come, but more than that, I am bit­ter­ly dis­ap­point­ed by this de fac­to reac­tion. It’s a let­down to see that the com­mu­ni­ty that I cher­ished for so long seems too often to have no more sub­stan­tial engage­ment with the con­cerns of those of us who chose to leave beyond ad hominem attacks. 

The com­mu­ni­ty I knew was a com­mu­ni­ty that prid­ed itself both on deep immer­sion in com­plex philo­soph­i­cal stud­ies and gen­er­ous invest­ment in char­i­ty and sup­port. The com­mu­ni­ty that I grew up in was a com­mu­ni­ty that strived to fol­low a God­ly path, that con­stant­ly issued exhor­ta­tions to per­son­al improve­ment, that engaged in intense recruit­ment of out­siders to what they claimed was a more ele­vat­ed life. I would expect more depth, more com­pas­sion, more pen­sive­ness, in their engage­ment with these issues. The cog­ni­tive dis­so­nance is unsettling. 

My hope for my mem­oir, and oth­ers that will sure­ly be com­ing in the next few years, is that the ultra-Ortho­dox com­mu­ni­ty will reject the tired script of ​“you’re crazy, you’re a liar” and instead enter the con­ver­sa­tion with valu­able ideas about how to make the ultra-Ortho­dox com­mu­ni­ty more tol­er­ant of those who choose a self-deter­mined life and more embrac­ing of per­son­al expres­sion. Both for my peers and for those I left behind. 

Leah Vin­cent works with Foot­steps, the only orga­ni­za­tion in the Unit­ed States sup­port­ing for­mer­ly ultra-Ortho­dox indi­vid­u­als. Read more about her and her mem­oir, Cut Me Loose: Sin and Sal­va­tion After My Ultra-Ortho­dox Girl­hood, here: www​.leahvin​cent​.com.