While I do not know this woman or her family personally, for the last six years through Jew in the City’s Makom branch, we have worked with hundreds of former and questioning haredi (ultra-Orthodox Jews), and their stories have given me tremendous insight into the phenomenon. Yet something pushed Haart out of her community, and many people are wondering what that is. Her ex-husband is an Ivy League grad who is the CEO of a tech company, despite Haart telling the New York Times that she had no radio or magazines in her house (do journalists fact check any more?). She taught at a modern Orthodox school in Atlanta and her students have told us that she regularly carried around Vogue. If you look closely at her past pictures in the show, she is dressed in modern clothing, makeup, and heels in every one. Numerous people who know her personally have written in to make sure we understand this. Haart does not come from an ultra-religious family or community. But extremism does not seem to be the impetus for Julia Haart’s unorthodox life. And these things can certainly make Judaism unappealing to some. Certainly not all families, schools or communities approach difficult texts with nuance or difficult mitzvos with understanding or allow room for varied opinions. In this article, we address these topics one by one, as systemic issues need to be faced and fixed (which is what we do in our Tikun branch) and challenging laws need to be understood with the complexity they deserve. ![]() ![]() Episode 1 of Netflix’s My Unorthodox Life basically lays out all of the major issues in Orthodoxy in the first 5 minutes of the show, just to make sure no one misses them! There are problems in the Orthodox Jewish community and there are challenging Jewish laws and sections of the Torah.
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