Photo: “Blindfolds” by Sarah Otero (Footsteps Member) Read more
Nearly 2,000 individuals have become Footsteps members since Malkie Schwartz, who left her own ultra-Orthodox community at the age of 19, founded the organization in 2003.
Their paths often lead to Footsteps, the only organization in North America providing comprehensive services to those who choose to take the journey out of ultra-Orthodoxy.
CHAVY MASHINSKY AND FOOTSTEPS SERIES
Netflix series Unorthodox’s exploration of one woman’s journey out of her insular ultra-Orthodox community in Brooklyn in search of a life of her own choosing in Berlin has captured the hearts of viewers around the world - a fact highlighted by the series’ 8 Emmy nominations and director Maria Schrader’s win for “Outstanding Directing for a Limited Series.” Many binge-watchers were left wondering about the real life “Estys” out there what happens to the women who make the courageous choice to leave the world they know in search of an authentic, self-determined life? Kay, Footsteps’ Senior Legal Strategist and Chani Getter, Footsteps’ Senior Director of Organizational Development. Panelists: Larissa MacFarquhar, the article’s author and Staff Writer at The New Yorker Julie F. Moderator: Award-winning author, journalist, and producer Abigail Pogrebin Watch this panel for a closer look inside the communities and courtrooms at the center of this story. The issues of divorce, custody, and parental alienation depicted in the article affect so many of our members, a third of whom come to Footsteps as parents in the midst of redefining their relationships with their spouses and children.
This panel follows up on The New Yorker’s publication of “When One Parent Leaves a Hasidic Community, What Happens to the Kids?”, an article featuring Footsteps and our members’ stories. Watch “Bias and Barriers”, a virtual conversation hosted by Footsteps about the challenges parents face when they leave insular ultra-Orthodox communities - both in the courtroom and in their communities of origin. “We had time to cement our new identity and feel confident that we made the right decision before having to face anybody,” said Ella. When lockdown happened in March 2020, they found themselves cut off from friends and family, which gave them space and months to think about whether they wanted to take the next step and leave their community altogether. In the summer of 2019, she and her husband took their first steps towards breaking away by moving a couple of miles down the road to a community whose adherence to Jewish law was not quite as strict. US groups like the one she approached report increased demand for their services since coronavirus, from people with more time for soul-searching to others troubled by social distancing violations and some who have already left needing counseling and financial support.Įlla, an alias because she has yet to tell her parents that she has quit Orthodoxy, said she was always interested in the world outside her “extremely religious family.” When she was younger she hid romance novels under her mattress and sometimes “pushed” the limits of her community’s strict dress code. Two months into lockdown, 29-year-old Ella left the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community that she was raised in near New York, started wearing trouser pants for the first time and contacted an organization that helps “leavers” adapt to life in wider society. The next day, he took his last breath alone in an NYC hospital.” The day she died, my Hasidic brother-in-law, 49 and a father of seven, had improved enough that doctors suggested he might be extubated. She would entertain me and my sisters for hours with hilarious stories on our adjacent porches in the town house that our grandfather bought for four of his 13 children. We had grown up next door to each other on Satmar Drive, named for our sect, in the exclusively Hasidic village of Kiryas Joel (now Town of Palm Tree) in Orange County, New York. The gut punch of her death presaged the painful road ahead. My first cousin, a 39-year-old Hasidic mother of three, contracted the virus and did not wake up on the morning of April 3, 2020, less than a month into lockdown. The deaths in my family came fast and early. But watching the latter resist COVID-19 restrictions while being decimated by the virus pushed that tension to the brink. “ I’ve spent a decade caught between the secular world and the Haredi Jewish community.
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