Cut Me Loose: Sin and Salvation After My Ultra-Orthodox Girlhood

by Leah Vincent

"Visceral and uplifting." -- The Daily Beast

A raw and electrifying memoir about a young woman’s journey from self-destruction to redemption, after cutting ties with her ultra-Orthodox Jewish family

For fans of the television series  Unorthodox and Shtisel , this brutally honest memoir tells the story of one woman’s quest to define herself as an individual. Leah Vincent was born into the Yeshivish community, an ultra-Orthodox Jewish sect. As the daughter of an influential rabbi, she was taught to worship two God, and the men who ruled their society. 
Then, at sixteen, Leah was caught exchanging letters with a boy, violating religious law that forbids contact between members of the opposite sex. Shunned by her family, she was cast out of her home, alone and adrift in New York City, unprepared for the freedoms of secular life and unaccustomed to the power and peril inherent in her own sexuality. Fast-paced, harrowing, mesmerizing, and ultimately triumphant, Leah's story illuminates both the oppressive world of religious fundamentalism and the broader issues facing young women of all backgrounds.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Religion, Jewish, Judaism, Biography, Biography Memoir

240 pages, Paperback

First published January 21, 2014

About the author

Leah Vincent is a writer and activist. The first person in her family to go to college, she went on to earn a master’s in public policy from the Harvard Kennedy School. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Daily Beast , Salon, Unpious, Kveller, ZEEK, Time.com 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. The co-producer of the It Gets Besser project, Vincent is also a member and board member of Footsteps, an nonprofit organization that empowers former ultra-Orthodox Jews.

Reviews

[K]

This is not a review of this book. I haven't read it and don't know if I will, having OD'd on the genre. Instead, I will give you a brief synopsis of my own yeshivish Orthodox memoir. The one I'll never write, because it's far too boring to publish. But having grown up in that world, I can tell you that my experiences are pretty typical.

My family self-identified as yeshivish but that word actually has a pretty broad meaning. We were strict about our Orthodox practices but I certainly wouldn't describe us as fundamentalist, a word being thrown around a lot in this book's reviews.

We had some family dysfunction which was pretty painful to live through at the time but we're kind of over it now. I attended a strict all-girls' high school. Sometimes I felt intellectually stifled. Mostly I was pretty happy.

As I matured and my world expanded I found a greater degree of intellectual openness which felt more satisfying. But I never wanted to abandon my Orthodox practices. I'm sure I'm missing out on some experiences but overall, I feel these practices enhance my life and make me a more thoughtful and disciplined person. The lifestyle doesn't work for everyone, but it works okay for me. There are also a lot of variations within the lifestyle, and many people find a form that works for them rather than throwing the whole thing out.

I'm not here to cast doubt on the authenticity of Leah's memoir. I don't assume that everyone's experiences mirror mine, and certainly I've met people whose trajectories are more similar to Leah's than to mine. But I want to give a shout-out to the many yeshivish people like me. Happy memoirs may be less marketable, but that doesn't mean they're less authentic or less representative. This memoir represents the experiences of one individual. It doesn't represent yeshivish orthodoxy as a whole.

[Whitney · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a Jew, reading this memoir was painful and gut-wrenching in the fact that a religion that I adhere to (although not as strictly) was used to perpetuate the neglect and abuse that Leah Vincent was subjected to.

The fact that exchanging letters was all it took for her life to be turned inside out shows the depth of misogyny and extremism that exists in fundamentalist sects (of any religion).

Vincent's willingness to share the most painful, disturbing and sexually explicit moments of her life as points of reference for how individuals can become isolated and left to fend for themselves in a world they do not understand is a testament to her strength of will. I rejoiced along with her when her college acceptance letters came through!

Like other readers/reviewers I also felt that the memoir could have used more fleshing out at the end of the book. I wanted to be able to know more of her successes and triumphs in college and with her future husband as well as how she began to rebuild a relationship with her brother that also followed her out of their Yeshivish sect.

[Julie Kusnetz · Rating 2 out of 5]

Personally, I thought this book was semi-pornographic, and irrelevantly so. Ms. Vincent describes in lurid detail various sexual encounters so meticulously and frequently that the book is overwhelmingly a story about her sexuality and not about why she left orthodoxy. And the narrative is oddly incomplete: we are treated to tale upon tale of sexual escapades, but given very little of the story of how Ms. Vincent succeeded at an Ivy League education, marriage, parenthood.....sorry, but I thought this read like trailer trash.

[Jessica Woodbury · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted this book because I could relate to it, having left a strict religious tradition myself (albeit a very different one). There was a lot in Vincent's memoir that rang very true to me. But I wanted so much more. Episodes that are obviously hugely defining are often skimmed over far too quickly. Her eventual assimilation from hyper-protected Yeshivish to profanity-spewing New Yorker seems to happen so quickly, when that could've been a real opportunity.

Still, it's an affecting memoir even if it could've done more. I read it in one day.

[Rena · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a difficult review since I grew up in Pittsburgh and know some of the author's family. (The author doesn't use real names, by the way.) I went to school with her oldest two sisters, one was in the grade above me and the other was one grade below me. Since it was a small private school at that time (one building for preschool to high school), we knew everyone in the grades nearest us and the oldest sister even was in some of my classes. The author's oldest brother was in my brother's class and he was at our house a lot before he left town for high school. These kids I knew personally and they were generally quiet, but not in a shy way. They were well-behaved and polite. I can't speak about the author, since when I knew her she was a little kid and once I got older, I didn't know the kids in the younger grades so much.

Anyway, I guess I read this book out of curiosity, because I thought the story can't be that bad. Well, it was, and it's such a sad story. Some people are extremely sensitive to certain textures (can't tolerate labels in clothes, find certain fabrics too scratchy) or to sounds, etc. They are labelled as having "sensory" issues -- they feel too much. I think there are those who have the same thing, but in an emotional aspect -- so that things that you may not think are a big deal end up being a big deal for another person. I'm not saying this as a bad thing, just that people are different. Maybe they would be musicians or poets, for example. The author grew up in a home with 12 kids which is so difficult. Raising just 2 kids is hard, can you imagine 12? Yikes! The parents did what they thought was best, but with so many kids, it can be hard to give attention to the ones that need it most. And just because one method worked for some kids doesn't mean it will work for others. The author writes how her parents sent the two older sisters away when they were 16 to a secondary school in England. Sending the girls away was not as a punishment or for any reason other than the parents saw it as a natural progression in their learning and eventual start to adulthood. Then the author was sent away as well. This was much more difficult for her and she wanted to stay home. I think it would have been better had the parents left her in the home & school she grew up in instead of sending her away. Of course, this is all hindsight. The author doesn't speak much of her earlier years, but wrote she had a difficult time making friends and forging connections so starting over is hard for a person like that.

The author's upbringing was in an orthodox Jewish home. Her family is the Yeshivish variety while mine is Hasidic. These are two different styles, as the author states in her book. But both are very religious. Since I can't know what exactly happens in her home, I do wonder how her feelings about the male/female aspect of Judaism were formed. She feels that women are subjugated to men in orthodox Judaism. She saw how her mother served supper to her father (but she served supper to everyone in the family, no?). Only her father and brothers attended services at her father's synagogue. Her mother and sisters stayed home. I thought that was odd since I always went every week to our synagogue, but we had no babies at home, so maybe that's the reason.

Anyway, we had different homes, but we went to the same school (I assume that until she left for England she was in the same school her sisters and I attended) and even had probably a lot of the same teachers. I never felt that way, that women were less than men. Never was told that in school, never even hinted at. We had both male and female teachers and we were treated as intellectual by both. The women teachers (of Judaic studies) were also mothers to several children, yet they still enjoyed teaching and answering our questions. Not just about the subject being taught, but also occasionally in other aspects of our lives. The Rabbis who taught us never looked down at us and also answered our questions. We were never made to feel inferior. So I can't understand how the author felt like that. Obviously, this inferiority led to a lot of the future problems the author had. She had a difficult life at a difficult age, when kids are learning who they are and figuring out who they'll be. Had the author had a creative outlet earlier in her life, I think she would have handled her angst differently. (Later in college she took an art class and enjoyed that.) A lot of the earlier tension between her and her parents could probably have been resolved with better communication, but isn't that true for all of us? It's just so sad that it escalated so much. And later sending her to live in a basement apartment in Brooklyn on her own is ridiculous. At least if she had a roommate or two, she wouldn't have been so isolated. A lot of the issues here stemmed from loneliness and feeling "apart". I really feel for the author.

But the author also doesn't take responsibility much. She blames a lot on her parents and strict upbringing, then on her idea that she has to please men. She feels lonely and doesn't have friends so instead of trying to get to know her neighbors or meeting other young people like her or a friend at work, she starts up a relationship with a man she sees on a basketball court. If she can do that, why can't she establish "normal" friendships? She does later acknowledge some mistakes, but still felt wronged when the married professor she was seeing decided to dump her. Really, you don't know you were in the wrong?

This is supposed to be a review and the writing itself is fine, nothing wrong with it, although it got very graphic at times. Since I don't read memoirs, I can't really compare it to others'. The book ends on a happier note, but I hope there can be a resolution with the author and her family.

[Kressel Housman · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a brave, soul-baring, and often shocking memoir by a young woman who left the Orthodox Jewish path of her upbringing, but I’m sorry to say, there are parts of it that I find hard to believe.

I have no trouble believing any of the sex, and there’s quite a lot here. It’s pretty explicit, too, and it’s rarely the healthy and loving kind. I completely understand why it could happen. Modesty is the #1 concept drilled into Orthodox Jewish women, and when it’s enforced incorrectly, it becomes the area in which a young woman is most likely to rebel. Because Leah was taught that a woman is either modest and chaste or she’s a slut, she fulfilled that expectation and entered into quite a few unhealthy and exploitative sexual relationships before she gained balance in that area. I know that many non-Orthodox and non-Jewish readers will blame her “fundamentalist” upbringing for this, but I come from the opposite perspective. I was raised in the secular world, and my first relationships were almost as bad as hers. As I’ve discovered from my sister, who is still secular, that’s the case for just about every woman she knows. Emotional abuse, drug and alcohol use, unwanted pregnancies, and even date rape are not uncommon experiences amongst women who engage in premarital sex. Modesty does offer women protection, and it's not a double standard in the Orthodox world either because it’s also expected of men. But I do understand that it’s possible for a parent to go overboard in the enforcement of modesty, and the inevitable result is a painful rebellion.

So while I believe everything Leah so bravely revealed about her sex life, including, if not especially, the instinctive cry of her heart for G-d, even while she was violating the most serious of prohibitions, her portrayal of her parents is another matter. It may be true, but they’re not like any Jewish parents I know. As I’ve said in other reviews, I’m the parent of an “off the path” kid myself, and I belong to a support group where I know many others. I believe that if any one of us (chas v’shalom a million times) received a call from a hospital that our kid just attempted suicide, we’d drop everything and run to our kid’s bedside. Leah portrays her mother as so cold-hearted, the nurse had to persuade her to come. Perhaps there are parents like that, but they’re a rarity. The “tough love” silent treatment is most definitely not what the experts are recommending to my support group. But who knows? Perhaps it’s because of Leah’s memoir. Her story can teach all parents what not to do with your non-Orthodox child.

As a person, I respect Leah. She’s put herself and her life back together. I don’t see why she considered eating bacon and eggs with her similarly off-the-path brother to be worthy of inclusion in her book, as though it was an accomplishment worth boasting about, but getting a Master’s degree from Harvard is nothing to sneeze at. It’s funny that though my life is in many ways the opposite of hers – I joined Orthodoxy particularly because I find strength in modesty – we have many similarities. I, too, had a much older lover. I, too, graduated from Brooklyn College. And I, too, desperately desire the validation of getting accepted into grad school. So maybe we two opposites will end up meeting in the middle, and if the middle is academia, then that’s pretty cool.

[Gail · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have a lot of ambivalence about this book. It was very painful to read and while I understand the catharsis it brought the author, I had reservations about the degree to which she exposed others who will also suffer pain from her revelations.

This book is a fine demonstration of the misery that fundamentalist ideologies inflict on believers and escapees alike. Everyone in this book suffers -- those who abandoned as well as the ones who were abandoned. It was depressing to read about the bigotry of the ultra-orthodox Jewish community. Though I am Jewish and have known that these communities existed, I was oblivious to the depth of their isolation and abandonment of the modern world. I was appalled at their views of other races, religions, and general education. The treatment of women and of anyone who questions anything, infuriated me. My experience of Judaism is one of progressiveness, encouraging questions, taking on the plight of the poor and disenfranchised. Where are those people in Leah's world? They don't exist. Her family lives in a bubble of its own creation, perpetuating a narrowness that advances no one.

Leah is unquestionably self-destructive on a monumental scale when she is drop-kicked into New York City with no money, no support, no basic human care. I can't fathom how one survives that. The fact that she did is a tribute to her strength.

***Spoiler follows ***

That said, the story itself focused on the pain and not much on the salvation. She has obviously become a thriving adult who has a life at last that is positive and sustaining. But how did she really get there? What happened when she went off to Harvard? Are we to believe that she has accomplished her goals without any counseling at all? If so, then her lesson isn't especially helpful to others in similar situations. Only in the last pages do we get a glimpse of the group that she now works for, a group that helps people abandoned by their community, make a healthy transition to a new life. She attributes much of her survival to yet another incredibly destructive relationship that was based on a tremendous power disparity, among other things. Yet she never questions or analyzes this at all. Suddenly, in the second to last page, she finds love, a family, Harvard ... all without any struggle. Her brother also eventually leaves the religious community and the two of them re-connect and support one another. There is precious little about the how-to in these two enormous successful transitions. That was disappointing.

In the end I was left with the impression that the book was a way to cleanse herself, to forgive herself, to show just how horrible it all was without providing any positive guidance on how she finally attained a degree of mental health. While it was well-written and a fast read, in the end, it lacked the depth that this subject deserved.

[Livia · Rating 1 out of 5]

Starts off deceptively as a memoir and has some interesting details about an extremely strict sect of Orthadox Judaism. Then the author leaves home and the book turns into a poorly-veiled excuse for pornographic writing. I gave her the benefit of the doubt that all of this was leading somewhere and was part of her journey towards assimilating into mainstream culture, but by the time I got to the end of the book it was clear she had no intention of writing or, apparently, thinking about anything except her many sexual encounters. That was 90% of the story. Another 8% goes to her conflicted ongoing relationship with her family, and 2% to "oh, and then I went to Harvard and had a successful writing career."

I understand that this is a memoir and not a novel, but I would have liked to know why she doesn't have any friends. What are her thoughts now about religion? What was it like adjusting to higher education after a restrictive background? As someone who has also come from a fanatical religious background, I know that there is far more to this story than she is telling, even if poor choices were a part of that. But she can't be bothered to tell the rest because apparently it's more fun to just write smut and call it a book.

If Leah Vincent really has no way of relating to the outside world except through misplaced physicality, then she needs to see a therapist, not write a book. If she can, she should have written about it instead of presenting such a one-dimensional and frankly degrading piece of writing.

A good example of a multi-dimensional narrative of a young girl leaving a strict religious family which tells every part of the story is "Waiting for the Apocalypse" by Veronica Chater. Much more worthy of a read than "Cut Me Loose."

[❀⊱RoryReads⊰❀ · Rating 4 out of 5]

I could not put this down. So many women have had similar experiences when leaving fundamentalist religions and this one is particularly well told.

[Dee · Rating 3 out of 5]

i agree with several of the reviews about lots of sex through-out, but i think she did a good job of trying to explain why towards the later part (self-fulfilling prophecy IMHO) - easy to read, although could have been deeper in places. Would be a good memoir to read along side I am Forbidden which addresses some of the same issues from a fictional stand-point (and the author of I Am Forbidden is mentioned in the author's note at the end)

[Lea · Rating 4 out of 5]

A recommended read addressing an important social issue. Many individuals who leave the ultra orthodox Jewish community are at worst shunned, and at best not bothered, but neither provided with necessary tools to survive a more secular lifestyle.
Leah is an activist who uses her heart wrenching experiences as motivation to improve other people's journeys along a similar path. I have seen her and her husband tirelessly offer their time, efforts and resources to support the community of people who have left ultra orthodoxy.
This book will take the reader on an emotional journey, questioning the cruelty in the world and the strength of the human spirit. Leah goes through hell and back, but ultimately emerges as a strong victor and proof that others can succeed in a similar journey.

[Jennifer Locke · Rating 3 out of 5]

I would call this book a "quick and easy read," except that there's nothing "easy" about it. "Quick and brutal" is a more accurate description. Vincent's memoir speaks to the danger of strident fundamentalism: after being cut off from a religion that provided easy answers and rules for life, she becomes completely unmoored. Much too quickly, Vincent goes from sheltered child to lonely adolescent grappling with the rules and consequences of a very adult world. Things get really, really terrible before they get better. "Cut Me Loose" is shocking, heartbreaking, and ultimately redemptive. I couldn't put it down.

[Marissa Morrison · Rating 4 out of 5]

If there were a gazillion more books like this--wherein people write about their religion, culture, family and experiences--maybe everyone would grow more understanding and tolerant about everyone else? We'd understand more about what other people are going through, at least.

In writing this, Leah Vincent was very brave. This is a raw memoir. She has mental issues. She cuts herself, she takes 75 aspirins in one sitting, she goes home (in graphic detail) with men who don't respect her.

It all starts when she's a teenager and writes some letters to a boy she likes. Her Orthodox family ships her off to a women's school in Israel, where (after the second great sin, buying herself a tight-fitting sweater) she is forced to work as a cleaning woman in order to buy her own food and toiletries. She is 16 years old.

Leah further alienates her family by having relationships with men and enrolling in college. Her mother tells her that by socializing with trash (goyem) she has become trashy. When she ends up in the ER with an internal cyst, her family refuses to pay for her treatment. Because she isn't a virgin, her brother sets her up with the only Orthodox man she "deserves"--a drug addict who turned to male prostitution in public parks to afford his addiction.

This book serves as a reminder to parents to listen to your children's ideas and to hold them in your embrace.

[Anne Slater · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read the NY Times review and decided I HAD to read this book. Religion, memoir, etc my faves.

This is a difficult, painful book. Ms Vincent does a great job of showing the reader where she was, how she felt, why she had to get out. How she coped along the way is every mother's (except hers, apparently) nightmare. I wanted to reach in and pull her out.
SPOILER ALERT





And as uncomfortable as I was with her situation, I felt compelled to keep on to the end.

My only (and I feel it's a major) quibble is with the ending: 6 paragraphs (1 page) before the last word, she write "Zeke and I were married. We had a beautiful child together..." Strike that:

Okay, 24 hours later, I've re-read the last page and a half and see that Vincent was just putting the inclusive happy ending before her "own simple happy ending, alone."

So who is the Phineas to whom she dedicates the book? the "Phin" whom she thanks at the end of her acknowledgments? How can someone who got her though the writing of this painful book NOT be part of the book? I'm probably being simplistic.

[David Katz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing? Fantastic? Inspiring? What else can I say? This book was fucking awesome and kept me spellbound and wanting more every moment. I couldn't put it down and read it in one sitting. I often felt like I was in the room for the events and was traveling with Leah along her path. I don't know what else to say except that the writing was superb, the story compelling, and I am inspired and enlivened to get the most out of life after reading what Leah went through to get to where she is today. Bravo!

[Eli Mandel · Rating 5 out of 5]

How do you review a book that is so intensely personal? Do you reveal all the personal feelings the reading of it evoked in yourself?
I don't know, so I won't review it.
I'll simply say that this book is a painful read, a sharp searing pain sometimes, a pain of association sometimes, while at times a pain induced by your inability to reach out and save Leah from the mistakes she's making. I don't think there's an extra word in this book, it is sharp, concise and painful.

[Vader · Rating 2 out of 5]

5 star - Perfect
4 star - i would recommend
3 star - good
2 star - struggled to complete
1 star - could not finish

I was expecting a higher quality book. I found the book as if it is from a vantage of a very insecure person channeling a few incidents to explain her entire life. I think the book exposes more of a bias from the insecure person and makes me wonder about how accurate the portrayal of the people really are.

[Bonnie G. · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was disappointing! I love stories about people who emerge from the yoke of fundamentalism, I love a good memoir, and this has been on my TBR since it came out. I had a number of problems with the book, but the primary problem is that it was uninformative and therefore a little boring. There were many things Vincent could have explored in her complicated life story that would have been edifying and interesting. Instead she gives us an uncontextualized litany of events that make no sense.

Great memoirs tell us about the people in the memoirist's life. Some well-regarded examples, "The Tender Bar", The Glass Castle, and Angela���s Ashes illustrate this. We have a clear POV from the author, but we learn as much or more about the people around them, so we can understand and empathize with the ways in which everyone's actions impact everyone else. Bad memoirs focus entirely on the memoirist, making us read along as they climb so far up their own asses that we and they both pass out from lack of oxygen. As you read this ask yourself if you know anything about Vincent's parents. They may have been bad reasons, but these people had reasons for the decisions they made. The cruel decisions they make are simply incomprehensible without any character development. Do we learn anything about the modern orthodox boys who begin to lead Vincent astray? About her sister who revels in the opportunity to ruin her life? About her aunt who took her in when she was thrown out of her house and then cast her out as quickly as her parents? Are they just all psychotic? According to Vincent she did nothing but pass some non-romantic notes with a boy and buy a sweater. We are to believe that her mother, father, sister and aunt disowned her and treated her with spite for these actions. I am not justifying her family's actions. There is no defensible reason to withdraw love and support from a 14 year old family member. But I am saying unless we know something about these people, there is nothing to ponder or engage with. We are left with what amounts to a series of sad diary entries about a bunch of mercurial Jews.

There are a couple other things which affected my opinion of this book. Several reviewers call this pornography. I suspect they've not read pornography. For better or worse, there is nothing remotely titillating here. There are several ill-advised and fairly clinical sexual encounters. If that makes you hot, be warned. For the rest of us, it’s just some mostly unsatisfying penetration. A second note, I have known some Hasidic women in my life, a few have been my friends, and all of them, every one, has spoken comfortably, and even hung out casually with non-Jewish men on a regular basis. They would not touch these men, that much is true, but neither do they hold themselves apart. In law school, one of our (coed) study group members was an unmarried Satmar woman. We all had serious discussions and joked around on break and I never saw her be even slightly uncomfortable with the men. Also, she was in law school, as were a number of other Hasidic men and women (I went to Brooklyn Law.) My favorite professor, Aaron Twerski, is Hasidic. One woman, Naomi, was in labor with her 5th or 6th child during the NY bar exam, she left the exam, took the subway from the Javits Center to a hospital in Brooklyn, and 2 hours later had the baby and she PASSED the bar (total badass!) My point here is that Vincent's family was Yeshivish, a less restrictive form of orthodoxy than that practiced by the Hasids (she says this herself in the book) but the behaviors she describes as getting her kicked out of the fold would have been acceptable for a Hasidic woman. The story doesn't ring true, and at very least is missing a lot of valuable information.

I don't question that Vincent was traumatized by her upbringing, and I am happy for her that she found what sounds like a very good life, but I think maybe her sense of betrayal rendered her unable to maintain any sense of objectivity, which is necessary to tell a story, even a memoir.

[Michele · Rating 3 out of 5]

An honest and at times gut wrenching memoir written by Leah Vincent born into the Yeshivish world, a very strict form or Judaism. Leah is the daughter of a Rabbi along with her ten brothers and sisters. The life of a woman in the Yeshivish community centers around God, prayer and subservience to men. Leah, even as a young child doesn't seem to fit, she wants more and is uncomfortable in this world. Any attempts to speak to her parents are rebuffed and she is all but ignored. When she is sixteen her aunt discovers she is exchanging letters with a boy, a forbidden act in her religion and her life is forever and irrevocably changed. Leah's parents are unyielding, cold and unforgiving. Leah's family shuns her, they do not want her to taint the family nor ruin her sisters prospects of a match being made for marriage. Leah is suddenly alone in a big city unprepared for the life confronting her, she is sheltered, naive and not ready to take care of herself. She spends the next few years looking for protection and comfort from men as she has been conditioned to do in her sheltered community. Not surprisingly Leah chooses all the wrong men and is used and abused while seeking love in all the wrong places.

I kept thinking enough is enough, smarten up girl but then Leah would explain her actions in respect to her past and I would have a better understanding of Leah's actions. I was fascinated with the Yeshivish community while reading this memoir and amazed how such God loving people could be so cold and unyielding. At times this was a difficult read, Leah is brutally honest in her account of her life and the difficulties she encountered on her journey to a conventional life. Being taught her whole life that anyone who leaves the Yeshivish community is less than worthless, made it easy for me to imagine her angst and poor self image.

For me this was a quick informative read. I was never bored with Leah's life or her telling of the story, I enjoyed her writing style and recommend this book to anyone looking for a story of survival among some pretty insurmountable odds.

As I finished the last pages I hoped Leah was happy and found the balance in life she was looking for.

[Susan D'Entremont · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked this book a lot better than Unorthodox, which I also recently read, and which also tells the story of a girl leaving her Ultra Orthodox upbringing. This book seemed more honest and more about the author herself than about members of her family.

I greatly enjoyed the first half of the book where the author takes the reader through the process of questioning and uncertainty. There were many things she loved about her religion, but she keeps tripping over problems and almost unexpectedly is on the outside of her religion.

I felt the second half of the book was not as insightful and got a bit repetitive. I know she didn't tell us about every sexual encounter she had, but it felt that way. I also wish she explored her relationship with her professor a little more. I can only hope she is getting therapy on that one. It was actually the most affirming of her relationships, but still weird.

The thing that I think is useful for parents reading this book is the whole exploration of too high expectations and strict guidelines actually pushing a child into the very life you DON'T want them to have. If the parents had just given Leah a little leeway, she never would have gone as far as she did. She felt that she was already rejected, so why try to stay on the straight and narrow.

The one thing that shocked me was the way the parents left her to completely fend for herself in New York City when she was 16 YEARS OLD. She had no high school diploma, yet they expected her to be able to support herself in her own studio apartment. She hadn't even grown up in New York and didn't know anyone there. It also seemed odd that such strict parents would allow her to live in her own apartment.

I was sort of annoyed by her fetishizing of Harvard at the end of the book. I mean, turning down a complete scholarship to University of Chicago?!? But, given the sheltered life she had growing up, I understand it.

[ShianneReads · Rating 4 out of 5]

From a memoir lover, this book does it for me. I gave it 4 stars because it lacks some depth, however the writing is captivating; I didn't want to put it down, I wanted to know what happened next and after that. Leah had a peculiar life and she transcended it with more than a few rough patches along the way. I could relate to her in more ways than one and it gives me hope that I too can transcend the life I was born into and make my own.

[Mary K · Rating 5 out of 5]

My heart broke for this woman all the way through the book. Beautifully written, without self-pity, without anger, brutally honest. The author grew up in an ultra-Orthodox home and is rejected by her parents for minor infractions. Lost and heartbroken, the author goes through a series of brutal sexual relationships, ultimately finding personal freedom and success. Beautiful story by a courageous woman

[SundayAtDusk · Rating 3 out of 5]

Like Deborah Feldman, the author of Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots , what Leah Vincent says in interviews does not always match what she wrote in her book. At least not what she said in her recent interview with Katie Couric. (I saw the interview online at Katie Couric's website. It was two parts, and I assume it was not edited.) Not knowing if the author is telling the total truth is one of the major problems with memoirs like this one, where one person is pitted against her or his parents, and the voice of the parents are not heard in the book, except through the words that the author provides.

Actually, there's a problem with the matter of truth even before Ms. Vincent starts telling her life story; on the back of the title page of the ARC, an author's statement reads in part: "Some events have been compressed or rearranged in time to more concisely convey my experience. As a girl, I was always told there was only one truth--and it was never, ever mine. Now, as a woman, I know that there is no single truth. We can only convey the raw and awkward shape of reality as we each experience it. That has been my labor, here." Okay, but if she's not telling exactly how and when things happened, she's not telling the total truth. Moreover, how does the reader know her truth is not a truth she simply wants to believe?

While Leah Vincent does not identify her parents by name in the book, it has already been disclosed online in at least one Jewish mother's forum who her father is. I went to his synagogue's website and saw a picture of him, as well as pictures of synagogue members taken during fun events, where they're wearing contemporary, colorful clothes. These pictures don't exactly match the rigid, old-fashioned images one gets from Ms. Vincent book; but then, she's in her thirties now, and much of what she was talking about in the book happened decades ago. Her mother grew up in Scotland, the daughter of a rabbi, who died when her mother was twelve. Leah Vincent is the fifth of eleven children. On the synagogue's website, it states that the rabbi and his wife are "the proud parents of eleven children and thirty grandchildren (so far!)" Note, that it did say eleven and not ten. Ms. Vincent obviously hasn't been totally forgotten. One also has to wonder how her book will affect her father and mother and their synagogue. Does she care? And why are her rights to publish a memoir concerning her family greater than her family's rights to privacy?

Leah Vincent states in her book that she was pretty much abandoned by her parents in her late teens for three reasons: 1) She was caught sending letters to a Jewish boy in England, while she was at seminary in Israel. 2) She used her entire monthly allowance from her parents one month to buy a pretty sweater, that fit too tight. 3) She told her mother she might want to go to college. As she tells it, after a year in Israel, her parents arranged for her to live in New York, when she was seventeen, just as her three older sisters did between seminary and marriage. On Katie Couric's show, Ms. Vincent failed to mention the matter of her sisters also having lived in New York when they were the same age, but instead made it seem like she was dumped there, and had to find herself a job and an apartment. In the book, she clearly states her mother found her a job and an apartment, and her parents paid the first month's rent. (The neighborhood was a mixture of mostly Yeshivish Jews, blacks and Hispanics.) She also states her parents did not coddle their children--little wonder since they had eleven children and obviously not much money--but she felt they helped out her sisters more than they helped her out.

She also says she loved her tiny apartment, and at no time does she express any fear about her safety. While she would eventually move from that apartment, she apparently stayed with the job her mother found her until she left for Harvard, and at one point was making $25,000 a year. Before some paychecks in the beginning, however, she had a hard time stretching out the grocery money, and describes how she once called her mother for help. Her mother told her to stop being melodramatic, and that she needed to learn to stand on her own two feet, but did send her $20. While Ms. Vincent speaks of missing the wonderful food her mother cooked, she never says anything about learning how to cook those foods for herself. One has the impression this was not a girl who would have been happy as a teenage mother, cooking and cleaning and caring for babies nonstop.

At some point, her mother also told Ms. Vincent they were giving her independence because that's what she wanted. Indeed, that is what she said she had wanted--she wanted to go to college, and did not want to end up like her older sister in Israel, with a complaining husband and one baby after another. Leah Vincent got what she asked for, but yet complained when no matches were being made for her, as they were for her sisters. If a match had been made, she would have been married off at eighteen. That's one of the main problems with this story--Ms. Vincent seems to want her cake and eat it, too. It also never appeared to occur to her that many teenagers are given the boot by their parents in their late teens, especially those from very large families, and are expected to go make a life of their own. Yes, that wasn't what usually happened to girls from a Yeshivish community, but she was getting the independence to do what she wanted with her life. However, she also wanted her parents to be the loving, supportive parents she hoped they would be, even though she knew they did not approve of a secular life for her.

The world is full of children and adults who do not have the parents or families they want, and that is life. But Ms. Vincent does again seem blind to that. Many times while reading the book, it does seem she thinks she and those like her, who have left the ultra-Orthodox faiths, are the only ones who have suffered what she has suffered, and the only ones she has any concern about. Don't expect much talk in this book about anyone's feelings, except for Leah Vincent's feelings. By the time one gets to the part in the book, where she is in her twenties, and states she has no guilt whatsoever about having an affair with a much older married professor, because she was not the married one and was only a little girl being used, the reader gets smacked in the face with her self-absorption and self-pity. This affair was described after pages and pages of very explicit descriptions of her sexual relationships with many men, her hospitalization with a very painful STD, her cutting, her suicide attempt by overdosing on aspirin, her stay in a psychiatric ward, her first marriage to a British guy so he could stay in this country, her short stint as a prostitute. (Was anything left out? Did all these things actually happen?)

On Katie Couric's show, Ms. Vincent made it sounds like she was raped by her first boyfriend, a Jamaican drug dealer, and was devastated it happened. That's not how it reads in the book. It reads more like that incident was just the beginning of a sex addiction, and she only broke up with her boyfriend one night when he was finding a porn magazine much more interesting than her. One is ultimately left with the feeling that there was something not quite right about her mentally from the start, and wondering if she made friends with the guys on the basketball court, including her Jamaican boyfriend, simply because they were black, and she knew her father was prejudice against blacks. (At least, she claims in her book her father is prejudice against blacks, and fails to see her own racism, thinking having had a black boyfriend meant she could not possibly be racist.)

It's interesting to note that it was the author's friendship with blacks that started her off in a downward spiral of stupid actions. It was like everything she was ever told would doom her, did doom her. She obviously knows this, too. But the important questions are: Does she take full responsibility for her life, her decisions, her actions? Or is she trying to get the reader to always see her as a victimized "little girl", mostly victimized by her parents and ultra-Orthodox Judaism, but also by most of the men she became involved with in New York? Moreover, don't self-destructive individuals share the blame for being victimized when they set themselves up for victimization, as the author often did in New York?

Leah Vincent obviously has no problem taking full credit for her accomplishments, and there are many--while working full time, she finishes college in Brooklyn; aces the GRE; gets an M.A. from Harvard; happily marries a Jewish guy and has a daughter. Although remarried, she strangely keeps, or at least writes under, the surname of her first husband . . . if Vincent was his real name . . . which will astound most readers when they read about her first wedding. I'm guessing she does this, though, only because of her love for the Don McLean song she talked about in the beginning of the book-- Vincent (Starry Starry Night) , the ode to Vincent Van Gogh. When she mentioned the song, she said she was the Vincent being sung about.

That leads us to the final question as to why the author wrote this book? Was it to get back at her parents, or at least get their attention, and condemn her childhood faith? Was it for money, or to show how successful she had become after overcoming so much during her years alone in in New York City? Was she trying to present herself as a good example for other females in the Yeshivish community who want to leave ultra-Orthodoxy? (Hopefully not.) Or was writing this book possibly just another act of self-destruction? She knows good and well what those in the Yeshivish community will think after they hear about or read this book.

Personally, I think she still cares what they think in the Yeshivish community. Although I certainly don't know that for sure, just like I don't know what went on in her family. Only family members truly know what happens or happened in their families. It's possible she was unfairly booted out of her family, or was the "designated sick one" or something like that. Whatever, she needs to take full responsibility for those years on her own in New York. In all fairness, she cannot claim she is responsible for all the good things she did, while her parents and ultra-Orthodox Judaism are responsible for all the bad things she did.

It's also difficult not to feel that she really likes drama, such as the ideas of being doomed and having a death wish, and doesn't want to give all that drama up. Leah Vincent probably would have been happier if she had been born into a smaller, less Orthodox family as a much adored daughter, who was given lots of material things like clothes and lots of attention. But she was not born into such a family. She was born the fifth child of eleven in an ultra-Orthodox family, the daughter of a well respected rabbi. Oh well . . . that's life. As a lovely song from the 1960s said: Sunrise, sunset, what you're born with is what you get.**

* Vincent (Starry Starry Night)--Don McLean

** The Time It Is Today--The Association

Afterthoughts 3/9/14: When I reviewed this book, I had no idea I would end up spending three months debating and discussing it with other reviewers. I wrote the review thinking Leah Vincent was someone who did not want to take responsibility for her actions, and just wanted to blame others. While I still see her as self-pitying and responsible for her actions, as well as her words, I also now cannot stop thinking of how this sounds like the story of someone with Asperger's--high intelligence, high vocabulary level, socially awkward, lacking empathy, inappropriate relationships, etc. This changes my viewpoint of the book somewhat, although not totally.

Now I'm wondering if the entire book is an effort to cover up Asperger's, or mental illness--which was possibly misdiagnosed when she was a child, by making her Orthodox Jewish insular childhood responsible for what actually could be attributed to Asperger's. I still think her parents should not be condemned for their actions, because they probably did what they truly thought was best, and we readers don't even know what all actually happened. This is a private family matter that should have been kept a private family matter. My final words on this book are this: One-sided memoirs are unfair and often so misleading . . . in so many, many ways.

Note: This review was first posted on Amazon 12/9/13.

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

first published at Entertainment Realm http://entertainmentrealm.com/2015/05...

Leah Vincent divides Orthodox Jews in three groups: Hasidic; Modern Orthodox –“semiassimilated into modern life—and Yeshivish –“committed to the centrality of the yeshivas—study halls where men ponder ancient legal texts.” It sounds a lot like the Amish. No television or modern technology. Little higher education. Young girls get married off as teenagers to start families at age 16 if possible. It’s a fundamentalist religion that many don’t understand and with knowledge/education and other options might disagree with it.

At the beginning echoing back to a teenage voice Vincent explains how she began to question the Yeshivish lifestyle and faith as a teen when she became interested in boys. That seems to be the main issue with which she struggles: “Yeshivish girls were not permitted to talk to boys. We were not allowed even to think of them. Since adolescence had arrived, my desire had roiled within, getting larger in the small container of my skin. My feelings were intensified and distorted in their repression. Nearly every boy I saw became a swoon-worthy Prince Charming.”

At 16 she’s sent to a Yeshivish school in Manchester, England where she meets a boy and they begin a correspondence. Her parents find out and she’s banished first to Israel as a semi-last resort. Vincent writes: “Though I understood the smallest brush with promiscuity spread around a girl and her family like toxic ink in a fishbowl, my banishment from Manchester was crushing. I was not a loudmouthed slutty girl who laughed at Jewish law. I was a girl who cried real tears over the destruction of the Temples every Tisha B’Av. I was a girl who would never sneak a kosher candy bar that did not carry the extra-strict cholov Yiroel certification. I wanted to be good. I was good. I had just been curious.”

Vincent then attends a school in Jerusalem. Her parents aren’t happy but don’t give up immediately. However, when she’s caught hanging around with boys her parents cast her out to live and work alone in New York. At first tries to stick to her Orthodox ways by eating Kosher, dressing modestly but soon enough isolated, confused and alone she spirals into a self-destructive phase. She cuts her arms. “The cutting gave me such release, I returned to it again and again and again in the days that followed, until it became a regular habit. The relief I found in cutting my skin helped me cope as I lived my split life of religion and college, modesty and loneliness, hope and memory.”

She has unsafe sex. She puts herself into situations where she’s raped and abused. Vincent quite explicitly describes the sexual situations. Perhaps she thought it would intensify or explain her turmoil. For someone so downtrodden she manages to work, pay her bills and attend college. At college she has an affair with a married professor 40 years her senior. The misguided father figure affair.

“I had chosen freedom, and I had paid the price: The loss of my family. Too much heartbreak. PID [pelvic inflammatory disease]. But where was my delicious free-for-all? Where was all the candy sweetness of sin I had been so direly warned about? Wasn’t that supposed to come along with its toxicity? All I seemed to encounter was rejection and disappointment. What other commandments would I have to break to access the goodies?”

Being agnostic, I don’t understand the draw of religions that don’t value women, that want to keep women in domesticated roles, bearing as many children as possible and never becoming educated. Strict religions and cults intrigue me. How can these strict religions and cults exist in the modern world? That’s why this memoir intrigued me. Vincent writes well. A bit more on her college experiences besides the affair with the teacher and her drive to attend Harvard for graduate school would make this much better.

–review by Amy Steele

[Gooseberryn · Rating 1 out of 5]

I originally wrote a review that was a bitter rant against the author. I would like to modify my review and be a little bit more critical. My father and I both read this book and had pretty much the same reaction: this was not a good book.

First of all the author is not a very good writer. There were a lot of glaring mistakes, most notable a triple negative at the beginning of one of the chapters. Since I checked the book out of the library I do not have it here to quote, but it was the first line of one of the middle chapters and should be easy to spot.

Second of all this book is not a memoir of religious stifling. I already ranted about how the author is purposefully misleading to paint herself as a victim. What I do wonder though is why she would still leave clues about this in her book? If you've taken psychology 101 you can see the signs of a mentally unstable person. She does little to mask this mostly because she does not see them. A lot of the book is about her attentions seeking, destructive behavior. This book is just a way to keep begging for attention. That does NOT make it good literature. If anything it is exploitative and someone should encourage the author to seek help rather then let her believe committing adultery is therapeutic.

Thirdly talking about your varied and disgusting sex life is not endearing. I am sorry, do you really want your children to pick this up ten years from now and know everything that mommy did with her vagina? I certainly don't want to know and I'm not even your daughter!

Fourth this book is a terrible representation of the world she grew up in. It is popular in today's society to see mildly strict religious upbringing as abusive. The literary market is flooded with tell-all memoirs that are purposefully exaggerated to create the most horrific tale possible. A lot of people who leave the community want to make excuses for leaving since I'll admit the lifestyle does lead these people to believe they'll be in trouble for leaving. The better solution is to own up to who you are and what you want instead of painting your past as evil. It just hurts those you left behind and creates more bitterness and denial. If you truly want a sense of what it is like to grow up in these communities, go ask the people who still live there, not the people who've left.

To be perfectly honest, (and you can call me politically incorrect, I do not care) the reason this sort of genre is popular is because we all want an excuse to throw off religion and pretend our lives are more exciting then they actually are. We all want to feel special in some way. A few former religious people can get away with this sort of trash by talking about a subject few know about unless they grew up in such a world. Here is my question to you, dear reader, how would you describe your own childhood? Is it worth putting in a book? You'd probably say no. That's what most people who grew up religious would say as well. Think about it.

[Hallie Cantor · Rating 1 out of 5]

Very painful, sickening read.

Another one of these memoirs where the writer not only misrepresents, let alone besmirches, an entire community, but blames the religion for her behavior, which seems to stem more from psychiatric issues. Apparently she had always been an oddball, the black sheep in her family; her parents' neglect and emotional remoteness led her to major father-figure issues and utter naivete about men.

She sounded deeply confused -- tattooing the Hebrew letter aleph into her flesh, even though tattoos are forbidden by Jewish law; hopping into bed with every man who gives her the time of day; attributing her life-saving epiphanies to Gandhi (Gandhi? why not G-d? or a rabbi?). While on the one hand she attacks the Orthodox community's perceptions of people like herself as "losers," "damaged," "flakes," "failures," etc., she certainly comes across that way. Noticeable is a vicious cycle -- her lack of social graces, as well as snotty attitude, drive normal people away, yet makes her further miserable.

In fairness, her family did come across as overly strict. I was shocked (assuming she was truthful) that no one came running to the hospital after her suicide attempt. Either something in her Jewish education was missing from the start or, tragically, she got overlooked among the large group of siblings. To its credit, this book does highlight the problems faced by kids who are "different" or women who aren't the conventionally feminine or domestic types. It might, in fact, be useful for therapists or anyone wanting to understand adolescent psychology or someone clinically depressed, to the point of "cutting" herself, as Ms. Vincent did. Myself from the outside -- a ba'al teshuva, one who entered Orthodoxy -- I can understand the torture of feeling adrift in both worlds. In this respect I will give her credit; she writes vividly and well. Nevertheless, a more balanced view -- or any insight -- would have been preferable. Instead, it was page after page of pornographic details -- encounters with lowlifes that left me nauseated. (I had to push myself to finish reading.)

As with similar memoirs, this one seems to further a feminist agenda, of blaming the men instead of taking any personal responsibility for actions that were bizarre at best, self-destructive at worse. No remorse about her affair with a married professor (3 times her age). She comes across, basically as a psychopath with masochistic tendencies. How sad that her acceptance to Harvard at the expense of her religious observance is touted as a victory; to me it is just another lost soul who traded in something precious for self-aggrandizement.

Read this carefully over an open sink.

[Michael Fishman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Definitely one of the most unique memoirs I have read: though admittedly, I have not read a lot.

In the sea of memoirs of formerly Orthodox Jews (known colloquially as "Off the Derech", literally "off the path"), certain themes crop up frequently: dogma; tradition; love and loss; sex, drugs, rock and roll, and plenty of self destructive behavior; separation; angst; depression; and once in a while, acceptance.

Leah's story contains many of these elements. She begins as the daughter of a renown yeshivish rabbi in Pittsburgh. In the beginning, she clarifies for the outsider the difference between yeshivish and hassidish--which even to a former Modern Orthodox Jew like me is sometimes not clear. Most stories begin with either the questions or the rebellious behavior (chicken/egg paradox). Leah did her lion's share of both.

It took me a few chapters to get the hang of Leah's prose. Much like (bad comparison time) Chuck Palahniuk, at first I could not understand how it was so highly acclaimed (in general, I'm not one to buy into hype). But then, she won me over not only with her prowess as a storyteller, but also with her uncanny ability to draw the reader into her emotional state of mind. She more than makes up for her sometimes rushed descriptions of her environment with her vivid language elucidating her mindset at any given moment in the book.

::spoiler:: in the end, when Leah gets into Harvard, I was totally rooting for her. She ends on that positive note; that despite the stereotype of the OTD ne'er-do-well fuck up, she subverted it. She may have taken a bumpy detour to get there, but SHE MADE IT! And now, she devotes a lot of energy helping others in similar situations to escape sans the destructive behavior.

Definitely a worthy read for those looking to understand the OTD world; or those who are OTD and looking for support. You will not want to put it down.

[Kevin · Rating 5 out of 5]

N.B. I received a free copy of this book through the First Reads program.

Prior to reading this book, I had never heard of Yeshivism or its relationship to Judaism. Most of the members of the tribe that I know are part of the Reform branch. As such, it was quite interesting to me to learn about a sect that I didn't know existed. Now, I will say that I would like to learn more about the sect as this presents a very biased anti-yeshivist point-of-view (quite understandably from the experiences of the author, though).

This is the author's memoir and is very much about her reactions and thoughts to her experiences. That leads to a very biased, one-sided approach to the issues involved. That's not meant to be a knock against the book, just a simple set of comments. She had a rough set of experiences and you definitely feel for her throughout the memoir. I really enjoyed her style of writing and did not want to put the book down. It was a very easy read, though the emotional roller coaster was not easy. I am glad that she seems to have escaped what seemed so inescapable for her and others that were mentioned in the story. I understand that she has fought against yeshivism and has been trying to raise awareness to help support those who want to leave yeshivism.

I definitely recommend picking up this memoir, though I'm not really sure of to whom specifically to recommend it. I think that this could be a good book club book, though, as it does seem like it would lend itself to discussion easily.

[Vilo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Leah Vincent compellingly portrays how it feels to suddenly be without community. It's hard to imagine being without any community other than work, which seems to have been indifferent to her situation. The book is frank in the details of her search for love in all the wrong places. I skipped over a couple of parts. Although this book is advertised as an expose of an ultra-Orthodox lifestyle and the problems with it, I think the discussion should be much larger. It is always heartbreaking and unjust when parents abandon their children, whatever the reason. What I found most shocking was how many people took advantage of a lonely girl--sometimes while telling her how others were taking advantage of her. Casual promiscuity has many more costs than our society is currently admitting. One situation particularly upset me where a person who had some responsibility for guiding her abused his position. The fact that Leah Vincent describes this relationship as therapeutic shows how truly horrible some of the other interactions were. She does finally find a support group geared toward people who have been raised in similar situations and have left or been abandoned. I admire the author's intelligence and ability to get through college and a graduate program at Harvard while nearly completely on her own. I wish there had been more description of how she managed to learn to trust again and develop a marriage founded on love. Perhaps that can be the next memoir she writes.

[Jennifer S. Brown · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think some folks are upset with this book because they feel it's a criticism of Judaism, but I have to say I thought this memoir did a great job of portraying Vincent's separation from the Jewish community without being overtly harsh on the religion; in my reading of the book, she's (deservedly) harsh on her parents, and her father's interpretation of Judaism. I have to think under different circumstances, Vincent would have happily lived an Orthodox, perhaps even Yeshivish, life if her family had been even slightly more tolerant. Their actions were abusive and I don't think she's make a broad statement about the religion but about the way it manifested in her family.

Parts of this book were difficult to read because as a reader, I knew that Vincent was making the wrong choices and many of the sex scenes were hard to get through because I wanted to scream for her vulnerability and tell her to be strong. But the scenes were realistic and I could understand the choices she made and the isolation she must have felt.

Vincent is immensely likable and her writing is engaging. I read this book in a single day. While I felt the ending was a bit rushed--I want to know more!--it's a good sign that I do want to know more. Of all the books of this genre (Orthodox leaving the community), this is definitely one of my favorites.