“I decided if there is a God, it must be the worst person ever. I couldn’t be religious anymore,” says Ben*, explaining why he left the strictly Orthodox community.
Ben, who has asked to use a pseudonym, had witnessed the community’s response to a young woman’s sexual abuse by someone within the community, and the lack of support for the victim left him reeling, with no option other than to leave. “I couldn’t be part of a community that behaves like this,” he says. “I hate and despise the community.”
Programmes such as Unorthodox have highlighted a way of life in which the internet and television are banned, books are censored, marriages are arranged and men study the Torah in place of working, leaving their wives to raise the children and often bring in the money too. Ben left six years ago, and it is thought that there are many others leaving or trapped in a community that makes it hard to get out.
People fear they will be abandoned by family and will end up alone, that they will lose their livelihood, and that they will lack the tools to support themselves financially outside the community. But there is help on hand. The charity GesherEU has assisted some 100 Jewish people living in the UK and elsewhere in Europe in leaving their strictly Orthodox community and making the transition into mainstream society.
Members of the strictly Orthodox community in Stamford Hill (Photo: Getty Images)
Ben has observed some who have lost their faith, remaining on the edge of the community, pretending to still be religious while they secretly live without boundaries and turn to drugs and prostitutes.
“This is why Gesher is an important avenue,” he says sombrely. “For the younger generations of people leaving, it gives them a structure, what is right or wrong. If you are leaving religion, you don’t have to lose your ethical values.”
For Ben, GesherEU provided the support system he lacked from his newly estranged family. “I found the sense of family and friends, people who know where I’m coming from,” he says.
That sense of understanding and companionship was palpable at GesherEU’s 10-year anniversary party at JW3 earlier this month, both a poignant celebration for those now able to live the life they want to live, and a space to mourn the years lost in a life that felt untrue. Set up in 2014 by Emily Green, the charity was inspired by Emily’s own escape from an arranged marriage and the strictly Orthodox Belz community in Stamford Hill, in 2012.
Emily Green on her wedding day when she was part of the strictly Orthodox community (Photo: Emily Green/YouTube)
“I was unhappy,” she says of how she wanted a different future for her children. “I didn’t want my girls to be pressured into an arranged marriage at the age of 18.”
She also wanted her son to get an education; at nine years old, he couldn’t speak English fluently, write or read. In addition, she wanted more for herself. “I just felt that I wanted something else. Something different.”
Those leaving the community are often told they have to give up their job. That included Emily, once she had left her marriage.
Charities such as Jewish Women’s Aid were helpful, but Emily felt that no-one fully understood how hard it was to be in endless family court hearings, battling rabbis to enable her to raise her children outside the community. After two years of struggle, she realised why people don’t leave.
“It’s simply too hard,” she says. “They put up all these barriers: people don’t have an education, they don’t have money. And you can really struggle – it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. I was angry. Why did I have to fight so hard to leave a marriage I had no say over?”
Having left the strictly Orthodox community, she recalls people talking behind her back. Not long after her custody battle, Emily discovered that not only were there people dotted around London, Manchester and even Switzerland who had left the community, but also that many were still trapped. She remembers people on social media congratulating her for her bravery, but being too terrified to follow her lead.
“I felt alienated. I was like: ‘Am I the only crazy person trying to do this?’ There were a couple of people that I knew had left years ago, but they vanished into living somewhere on their own. They were scared. It was all very cloak and dagger.”
Purim celebrations in a strictly Orthodox community (Getty Images)
It was then that she heard about Footsteps, a New York-based group providing educational and social support for those who wish to leave strictly observant communities. At their events, she experienced being with people who understood and shared support without judgment. She returned thinking: “I’ve got to do something.”
That 25 people attended her first get-together one Saturday evening, including one who had driven down from Manchester especially, proved just how much it was needed. She now hosts social events twice a month.
A mother-of-three called Amy* tells a similar story of being miserable in a marriage into which she was forced aged 20. Being from neither a rich family, nor the daughter of a rabbi, Amy found herself in the “third class”, which meant slim pickings for a husband. When she protested that she wasn’t ready for marriage, she was put under “extraordinary pressure” and felt the responsibility towards her younger siblings and the risk of “destroying” their lives as well as her own if she turned down this opportunity.
“My mother seemed to think that if I said, ‘No’, I wouldn’t get anyone else and that really frightened me. It all felt like: ‘Go with it or else you won’t have much of a life.’ So, I said, ‘Yes’, even though I couldn’t have been less attracted to someone.”
While her husband studied and claimed benefits, Amy raised their three children, did all the domestic chores and held down a well-paid job. She felt she had no choice but to leave the community. “I don’t want my son to be a husband or father like his own father. I don’t want my children to feel the pressure, coercion, shame and fear and everything that dominates that community,” she says. “I want a different life for them.”
GesherEU helps people who wish to leave the strictly Orthodox community and transition into the outside world (Photo: Getty Images)
Amy wanted to remove her son from his unregistered school and place him in a registered one, but her husband and the community insisted on a strictly Orthodox school. She embarked on a court battle, for which she had to raise thousands of pounds, to fight to send her children to a Modern-Orthodox school. With “no allies left”, Amy had to leave her job to raise her children outside the community.
Also at the party was Motti with his new wife Siying from Beijing. Motti left the Charedi community in Stamford Hill in 2016. His English was poor and he had no education nor qualifications.
“It was like immigration,” he says today, his shtreimel and payot long gone. “It was moving from a life that I know, from my family, wife and children and job, and starting from scratch in a foreign country to find my way in the world.”
Motti had suggested moving to a less strict area in Golders Green to give their children the opportunity to gain qualifications, but his family and the community gave him “an ultimatum” and, he said, “told me: ‘Either you are with us or you’re not, and if you’re making any changes, you will not have any family anymore. We won’t want to know you; you will be on your own.’”
With his ex-wife remaining in the community, eight years after leaving, he is still embroiled in custody battles to enable his three children to stay with him.
Still, he never doubted his decision. “It was a choice: Do I sacrifice my life and the life of my kids? After years of questioning, it didn’t make any sense anymore. I couldn’t raise my kids in a way that I don’t believe. I cannot look my kids in the face, 10 years from now, when they say: ‘Why didn’t I get an education? Why did I get married at age 19? Why did I start having children without any prospects?’ Would I say that I was too scared to do anything about it? I know that they now have an opportunity to explore the outside world.”
Emily is aware of how hard it still is to leave the community and wishes change would happen more quickly. “But nothing happens overnight,” she says. “The community wants to do everything to stop people leaving. I hope people hear that if you leave, you don’t have to struggle or be alone. You can live a normal life and be happy.”
* names have been changed
