The memoir genre has grown by leaps and bounds in the last
few years. However, it seems to me that the recent spate of books published by
formerly ultra-Orthodox Jews offer a much needed antidote to the world of
ultra-Orthodox Jewry that most people imagine. Indeed, that world in the United
States is not the same as the one in Chagall’s paintings, Chaim Potok’s The Chosen, or Barry Levinson’s “Avalon.” The ultra-Orthodox world of
Deborah Feldman’s “Unorthodox,” Shuleem
Deen’s “All Who Go Do Not Return,” and
Leah Vincent’s “Cut Me Loose” is a
world that is much darker and more tragic than the one that we imagine.
Leah Vincent’s memoir is the most recent of the three. It is
a well-written, thought provoking journey into the world of Yeshivish Jews. The
story itself is one of a girl being cast out by her own community for violating
sacred laws, find her identity, and then moving on to a better, brighter
future. However, Leah Vincent’s tale is not a typical Cinderella story. It is
far from that.
One of the ideas that Vincent iterates throughout the book
is the notion that those who leave ultra-Orthodox communities are doomed to
spend the rest of their lives as drug addicts, castaways, and
good-for-nothings. Every woman who is not an obedient wife popping out children
at regular intervals and leaves the community is viewed as nothing less than a
whore. These brutal terms were so ingrained in Ms. Vincent’s psyche that she
found herself turning into a woman who slept around with other men thereby
fulfilling her community’s notions of what she would become.
The sexual nature of much of the memory is extremely
explicit. I would not calling this pornography nor put it in the same category
as other books that are out there, but the descriptions clearly show how
violated Vincent was by the men in her life. These men, I would like to add,
used her and threw her away as if she was nothing more than a toy that could be
discarded at will. Even in her relationship with a professor, she was dropped
when she got in the way of that man’s marriage.
Even more harrowing than Vincent’s sexual life is her
treatment by her family. The author’s rejection by her most of the members of
her family is brutal and final from the time she was seventeen years old. She
was by her parents as if she had a disease. They also refused to cover her
bills when she landed in a psychiatric hospital. Their treatment of her,
however, makes sense to those who understand that a person who is unclean must
not be touched at all and someone who has left the fold must be rejected. The
world of the ultra-Orthodox is not grey. It is black and white. It is a lesson
that Leah Vincent learned to her sorrow and one that also allowed her to grow
into the woman she eventually became.
