{"product_id":"cut-me-loose-isbn-9780143127413","title":"Cut Me Loose","description":"\u003cb\u003e\"Visceral and uplifting.\" --\u003ci\u003e The Daily Beast\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA raw and electrifying memoir about a young woman’s journey from self-destruction to redemption, after cutting ties with her ultra-Orthodox Jewish family\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e For fans of the television series \u003ci\u003eUnorthodox\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eShtisel\u003c\/i\u003e, 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 things: God, and the men who ruled their society.  \u003cbr\u003e 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.\"Vincent doesn't sensationalize what happened to her; she's more concerned with writing about he she reclaimed what belonged to her all along -- freedom, agency, self-sufficiency. This is what separates her tale from most...Orthodox memoirs: it's as thoughtful and heroic as it is gripping and tragic...It's the finest example of this sort of memoir yet.\" —\u003cb\u003eFlavorwire\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Wrenching ... Her book should be read, not just as a warning of the very real dangers of the world, but also of the price to be paid when, in the name of religion, people forget humanity.\" \u003cb\u003e\u003cb\u003e—\u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Wall Street Journal\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\"A sometimes-sweet, sometimes-harrowing memoir by a smart,  passionate ultra-Orthodox girl. . . . engrossing and so thoughtfully  written, and never mocks the traditions and values of a culture that few  of us can fully comprehend.\" \u003cb\u003e\u003cb\u003e—People.com\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\"Painfully raw.\" —\u003cb\u003eSusannah Cahalan, \u003ci\u003eNew York Post\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Gripping. . . . Readers will appreciate Vincent's uncensored honesty in sharing the horrors of her past.\" —\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eThe Washington Post\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Compulsively readable.\" —\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eBookpage\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Never before has rebellion been so sweetly rendered. And never—not since the memoirs of Mary Karr—has the connection between self-destruction and family dysfunction been so tangible and clear.\" \u003cb\u003e\u003cb\u003e—\u003c\/b\u003eKoren Zailckas, bestselling author of \u003ci\u003eSmashed \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eMother, Mother\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e\"Cut Me Loose\u003c\/i\u003e brims with a girl’s longing, and shines with a woman’s insight.\" \u003cb\u003e—Christa Parravani, author of \u003ci\u003eHer\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\"Gutsy, smart, and incredibly difficult to put down.\"\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e—Wendy Lawless, author of\u003ci\u003e Chanel Bonfire\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\"Vincent's story is full of despair, of longing, of trying to find a place for herself amid a world that doesn't allow girls to be their whole yearning selves. The reader cheers for her when she finally escapes the prisons built by the various institutions she grew up with.\" \u003cb\u003e—Kerry Cohen, author of \u003ci\u003eLoose Girl: A Memoir of Promiscuity\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"The voice Vincent has claimed is unflinchingly honest and incisive. It has already begun to resound on behalf of others who struggle to escape abuse and oppression.\" \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e—\u003c\/i\u003eAnouk Markovits, author of\u003ci\u003e I Am Forbidden\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Vincent’s writing brims with tension, insight, and longing.\"\u003cb\u003e —Margaux Fragoso, author of \u003ci\u003eTiger, Tige\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003er\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\"Leah Vincent shares a harrowing journey that will speak to all children fleeing intolerance, who struggle to be seen and accepted on their own terms.\" \u003cb\u003e—Julie Metz, bestselling author of \u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003ePerfection\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003eLeah Vincent, who now goes by Jericho Vincent, is the author of \u003ci\u003eCut Me Loose: Sin and Salvation After My Ultra-Orthodox Girlhood \u003c\/i\u003eand the co-author of \u003ci\u003eLegends of the Talmud\u003c\/i\u003e, a collection of illustrated children’s stories. They have lectured on sexual assault, trauma, and Judaism at colleges, organizations, and synagogues across the country. Their essays have appeared in the \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e, Salon, the Cut, \u003ci\u003ethe Daily Beast\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eMask Magazine\u003c\/i\u003e, the Forward, and the Rumpus. The first member of their family to go to college, Jericho was a Pforzheimer Fellow at Harvard, where they earned a master’s degree in public policy. Named to the \u003ci\u003eJewish Week\u003c\/i\u003e’s 36 Under 36, they have organized numerous initiatives advocating for reform in the ultra-Orthodox community, including co-producing the nationally-profiled It Gets Besser Project. They live in Brooklyn with their partner and collaborator, Ben Ash Blum.\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eauthor’s note\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003echapter one\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMY FATHER, RABBI SHAUL KAPLAN, was a short, stiff-shouldered man with flat, sad eyes and a high forehead that faded into a bald pate. Like all Yeshivish men, he dressed in a dark suit, white shirt, and black fedora. When we picked through the laundry heap, looking for clean underwear, we would find his sleeveless undershirts and his worn boxers, translucent from too many washes.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThere were eventually eleven of us: Goldy, Shaindy, Elisha, Chumi, me, Deena, Mordy, Boorie Tzvi, Dov, Yanky, Miriam. We were each two years apart. We had big brown eyes, olive skin, pixie chins, and wildly distinct personalities.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWe called our father “Tatte.” Because we were Yeshivish, we didn’t speak a fluent Yiddish, like the Hasidim did, but our English was sprinkled with a few words in that language, when English could not do justice to a concept.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMy father had called his own father “Dad,” but as a child I was not critical enough to reflect on the discrepancy between the little I knew of his history and his insistence that our way of life had always been as it was.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e • • • \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eOur three-story home sat on the bottom of a hilly street in a quiet, residential area of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. On Thursday morning, a few hours before Passover would begin, I was standing in my favorite spot: behind the open kitchen door, where my mother hung my father’s clean shirts that were waiting to be ironed. All of his shirts were white, collared, and button-down, but they were not all the same. Some had a checked pattern of shiny white-on-white thread. Some were transparent with wear. Most, however, had hard stays inserted into the collar, two sharp, oblong pieces of cardboard on either side of the neck. My favorite activity at age nine was to stand behind the open door, right index finger thrust backward in my mouth, sucking hard, left hand on a collar stay. I’d run my thumb and finger around the edge, bend the cardboard, relishing the dig of the pointed end into the fleshy part of my thumb, and flip the stay while it was still in its pocket. My father, busy with prayer, teaching, lecturing, and counseling, was rarely home. As with God, I treasured him through his rare artifacts.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAs the ultra-Orthodox rabbi of the largest semi-Orthodox synagogue in western Pennsylvania, my father devoted his life to bringing his congregants closer to God by urging them to leave their Modern Orthodox ways and embrace God’s true will: the Yeshivish lifestyle. At this, he was successful. Over the years, congregants exchanged knit kippas for black hats, and delicate hair doilies for heavy wigs.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eOur house sat kitty-corner to the synagogue, so in the summer, with the windows of the sanctuary cantilevered ajar and our small bathroom window open, I could hear Kaddish while sitting on the toilet. Whenever this happened, I’d have to clap my hands over my ears. As an observant Jew, you could not hear Kaddish and not respond, “May his great Name be blessed forever and ever,” but you also could not speak of God in the bathroom.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMen prayed in the synagogue three times a day, but women went only on Saturday and holiday mornings, and, even then, their attendance was not required. So while my father spoke to God from a cherrywood throne beside the holy ark, overlooking a thousand pews, my mother murmured quick morning prayers hidden behind the kitchen door. I was unusual as a child in that I preferred to sneak away on Friday night to sway along to the songs that welcomed the Shabbos. I loved to feel goose bumps prickle my arms as the languorous “Lecha Dodi” changed halfway into a rollicking tune, almost as much as I loved that moment when the service ended and the room emptied and I could walk through the men’s section as if God’s home was my own. I would wait on the side as my father put away his holy books and offered some last words of guidance to his congregants. My shy stance declared that I belonged to the rabbi and, therefore, to God.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e • • • \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThat morning, before Passover, I stood sucking my finger, fiddling with my father’s collars, tucked out of the way, as my two younger brothers chased each other up and down the stairs belting out, “\u003ci\u003eTamid tamid tamid tamid tamid b’simcha,\u003c\/i\u003e” and two of my older sisters had a showdown over a new library book. It was a special day, and not just because of the approaching holiday. This was the day my father went to the video store.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eTelevision and movie theaters were forbidden in our Yeshivish community, but before Passover, my father, an otherwise unyielding man, would relent and rent a few classic movies. They would keep us glued to the borrowed VCR in the attic, freeing my mother to whip together pans of tongue and roasted chickens and brownies and waves of crispy meringues, which she’d ice with thick mocha cream and adorn with strawberry slices.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eI sucked my finger until the skin wrinkled, waiting for my father to return from the synagogue.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePlease, \u003ci\u003eHaShem\u003c\/i\u003e, I silently prayed to God. Please let Tatte choose me.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhen my father finally came home, he headed to the kitchen to talk to my mother. Elisha, my thirteen-year-old brother, home for Passover from his yeshiva in Chicago, bounded in after him, beckoning to me and to my seven-year-old sister, Deena, to join him in the hallway.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Guess what!” Elisha whispered. Deena and I huddled in. “You’re not going to believe this! The butcher, he—he—” With our attention captured, Elisha paused dramatically to fix his yarmulke\u003ci\u003e,\u003c\/i\u003e which was sliding off his curly hair. Deena and I glanced curiously at each other.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eA week before, just after Elisha had arrived home, he had passed on the juicy information that the butcher, a man as tall as a door and fat, too, had yelled at my father in the synagogue, angry about some ruling my father had made. Because he got to hang out with the men, Elisha always overheard the best gossip. We all agreed that the butcher must be crazy. Most of my father’s congregants worshipped him, sometimes speaking to him in the third person and always using a tone of respect.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“The butcher,” Elisha continued, his eyes wide, looking from Deena to me and back to Deena. “His wife found him dead, completely, totally, absolutely naked on their bathroom floor. The butcher is dead.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eElisha grinned, nodding his head slowly. In shocked silence, Deena and I pondered the strength of God’s swift and brutal judgment on my father’s behalf.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMy father passed us, and the three of us guiltily drifted apart. He reached for his hat, which was resting on a mountain of books. I scanned his face, looking for some sign of God’s mighty anger in his features, but my father’s eyes were peaceful, his calm lips buried in the hairs of his beard.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Who do you want me to take, Mamme?” he called to my mother as he adjusted his hat.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe video store! I had forgotten!\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eElisha, Deena, and I sidled up to him, our eyes silently begging: \u003ci\u003ePlease, pick me.\u003c\/i\u003e Even in our desperation, we didn’t get too close to my father.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Pick whoever,” my mother answered. Streaks of blood ran over her hands as she removed the innards from the chickens piled before her. She rested her pregnant belly against the countertop, swiping at her cheek with her shoulder.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Leah, do you want to come?” my father asked. “You’re ready?”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eI nodded. My throat was too thick with pride to answer.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Get good ones this time!” Deena instructed. “Tatte’s favorite!” she added accusingly, in a hiss.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Get the Abbott and Costello with the bases!” Elisha commanded.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eTheir requests floated past me as I stumbled to catch up with my father, who was striding toward the station wagon.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e • • • \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAt Sun Video, I stared longingly at the forbidden pinks and purples of the new Disney blockbusters while my father asked me if I wanted an Abbott and Costello comedy or \u003ci\u003eKidnapped\u003c\/i\u003e. I did not know that my father had grown up on these classic movies. I only knew that the more modern a thing, the more promiscuous, the more suspect. Non-Jews believed that they were descended from monkeys and so every generation forward was better than the last, but we knew that our ancestors had received the Torah from God, so every new generation was reduced in holiness.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“\u003ci\u003eKidnapped,\u003c\/i\u003e” I told him.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e • • • \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eA few hours later, I met Davie on-screen. A brave Scottish boy, he raced over the highlands escaping the bad guys, who marched ominously down the hills. Maybe it was his relentless courage. Maybe it was his blond curls and square jaw. Maybe it was just the right boy at the right time. It was instant love.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e • • • \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMy mother stopped by my bed that night, as she always did, her pregnant body sinking into the mattress. Every year of my childhood, she was either pregnant or nursing a new baby.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Did you say Shema?” she asked.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Yes.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Well then, close your eyes and say good night. Sleep tight. I loo loo, Leah, I loo loo.” She brushed her cool fingers down the side of my face.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Loo loo,” a child’s attempt at the words “love you,” was the only way that sentiment was expressed between mortals in our house. My parents were not literate in the language of human emotion. Love was gleaned from the tone of my mother’s voice or the softness of her eyes. When I was very young, she and my father would sometimes call me “Leahchke,” and there were volumes of affection to sustain me in that generous diminutive. My father was more effusive. Every Friday night, after blessing the children, he would place one careful kiss on the top of each of our heads. Sometimes, as rarely and spontaneously as a sun shower, he would pause behind my chair and gift my head with an unearned kiss.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e • • • \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAfter my mother left my bedroom, I nestled into my pillowcase, with its smell of sweat and honey, fantasizing: It was my eighteenth birthday. A knock at the door. In came the movie star Davie, dressed in a black hat and dark suit.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“I’m Jewish,” he tells my father. “I became religious, and I’ve spent the past ten years studying the Torah day and night, and now I want to marry your daughter Leah.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eI would never be allowed to marry a lowly returnee to Judaism, but in my fantasy, Davie’s lineage didn’t matter. The sleeves of my wedding dress would be as big as basketballs. “You look gorgeous,” everyone would say. In the years that followed, Davie would love me, Leah Kaplan, the way I loved only God: more than anyone in the world, forever and always.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003echapter two\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eTHERE WERE FEW PROSPECTS IN PITTSBURGH for a Yeshivish teenager approaching the age of marriage, so at sixteen, my oldest sister, Goldy, dropped out of high school to go to the prestigious Manchester Seminary, in England. While Pittsburgh had a few hundred Modern Orthodox Jews, a few dozen Lubavitch Hasidic families, and about fifteen Yeshivish families, Manchester had enough Yeshivish people to fill multiple schools and dozens of synagogues. Its seminary attracted hundreds of top Yeshivish girls from all over the world. Because England offered an abbreviated high school system, the seminary enrolled girls as young as sixteen. The sooner in, the quicker out, the faster a girl could move from her father’s home to her husband’s.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eA few weeks after Goldy left, we leaned our curly heads around the tape recorder, shouting hellos to her in England. When she came home for Passover, we ran through the airport to meet her. “Bazooka gum is kosher!” Deena shrieked, reaching Goldy first, exploding with excitement at this recent piece of good news.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eI wanted to be that missed. I made up my mind that I would do exactly what Goldy had done. When I was sixteen, I, too, would go to Manchester Seminary, and hopefully I would be as successful as she soon was: a marriage shortly after she graduated and a baby each following year.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eInitially, my parents supported my plan, but as my adolescence unfolded, they changed their tune.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe first problem arose when I objected to my father’s use of the word \u003ci\u003eshvartze.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“‘African American,’ please,” I begged.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“\u003ci\u003eShvartze\u003c\/i\u003e just means ‘black’,” he chided me. “Blacks aren’t like other non-Jews. They live like animals.” His understanding of God’s will was vastly different from that of his own father, a rabbi who had marched with black preachers in the 1960s, demanding civil rights.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThen there was the issue of several new brothers-in-law, who wrapped my father in conversations in Hebrew and Aramaic that I, as a girl, could not understand. I was used to my father sharing his wisdom in English at the Shabbos table, meeting my eyes whenever he spoke.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eNow my brothers-in-law sat beside my father at holiday meals. “Can you repeat that in English?” I would ask loudly from the end of the table. My sisters rolled their eyes at my immodesty.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Someone wants attention,” Deena frequently snickered.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eConcerned about the corrupting influence of my classmates in Pittsburgh, my parents decided that I would leave Pennsylvania a year earlier than we had originally planned. After tenth grade I would move in with my Aunt Fraidy and Uncle Vrumi in Manchester, where I would attend the stringent local Bais Yaakov high school. And then I’d be back on course: Manchester Seminary, marriage, children, grandchildren, the World to Come.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e • • • \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhen it was time to leave for the bus that would take me to the airport in New York, I ran after my suitcase as I slid it down the stairs. My mother wagged a black snow cap in my face as I kneeled to tie my sneakers. “You have to wear this hat!” she insisted. “I’ll be too worried about you traveling alone. I don’t want anyone starting trouble with you.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“It’s an old lady’s hat!” I grabbed my suitcase and tugged it to the door, where my father was waiting, keys in hand. I hoped that if I could get the suitcase out to the porch, my mother would give up on the hat and focus on saying good-bye and telling me how much she was going to miss me.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“A hat is not going to make me invisible,” I protested. “I won’t talk to anyone, I promise, I’ll be so \u003ci\u003eso\u003c\/i\u003e safe.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Just wear it,” my father said. “You’re not going to be harmed, anyhow. You’re friends with black people, aren’t you?”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eI watched him stride down the driveway to the car, my mouth agape at his insult. I had complained about the racism rampant in Yeshivish communities, but I was not so perverted as to be friends with non-Jews.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eA playful wind blew at my ponytail, lifting my hair off my neck. “You better go on,” my mother said, finally giving up on the hat. “Have a safe trip.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e • • • \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eManchester was gray and wet. Through a steady cold drizzle, I took in my new neighborhood: a religious suburban enclave of low brick homes and small green lawns. The Manchester Bais Yaakov was housed in a decrepit mansion on the far side of the highway at the edge of town, a twenty-minute walk from the heart of the community. I learned my way around the high school and around my cousins, my shyness cloaking me in nervous silence as I navigated my new surroundings.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eNight came early in England, and by December, it was already pitch-dark when Jewish Ethics finished, at five. The school day done, I had my backpack in one hand, coat in the other, as I waited behind the crowd filing out of the classroom.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Hey, Leah, one sec,” Shalamit Kohn called over the noisy chatter and the howling wind shaking the windows in their frames.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eI froze. The few times my classmates had called my name over the past few months, it had usually come with a singsong “teacher’s pet!”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“DoyouwannacomeoverforShabboslunch?” Shalamit asked, stuffing three words into the space for one. A tall girl with skin the color of weak tea, she wasn’t one of the popular girls; she was a brainiac from one of the few families that straddled the line between Modern Orthodox and Yeshivish ideologies. Still, she was miles above an introverted American transplant in the social hierarchy.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eI nodded yes, too many times, my chin wobbling in nervous excitement.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e • • • \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe Kohns lived a few blocks away from my cousins. Their house was dark and warm, the lazy English sun barely penetrating the heavy curtains. That Saturday, Shalamit was wearing a scandalously casual turtleneck, so snug the ridge of her spine lifted the back. Her plaid skirt was much more stylish than mine, puddling on the floor when she stood and flying up in small waves as she walked. She introduced her mother and her two younger sisters, quiet girls with bangs in their eyes. Moments later, Dr. Kohn and her older brother, Naftali, came home from prayers.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Good Shabbos to you,” Naftali said to me. He lounged in a dining room chair, chin up, kippa hanging off his hair like a parachute. Gorgeous eyes, I thought. And those candy-pink lips. Is he actually talking to me, his little sister’s classmate? A girl? I hadn’t spoken to an unmarried boy who I wasn’t related to since I was a kid. Once I’d entered my teens, my future marriage prospects would have been automatically downgraded if I’d been caught talking to a boy.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“G-g-good Shabbos,” I managed to stutter back.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eDr. Kohn raced through the blessings for the wine and the bread. Over gefilte fish, Naftali brandished his fork and knife, trying to stir up an argument.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Women should be allowed to study Talmud,” he said, invoking a debate that split the Yeshivish and Modern Orthodox communities.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Hush.” Dr. Kohn shook his head. Though he had a doctorate, he was not as ideologically removed as his son.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“There is no valid reason not to allow it,” Naftali insisted.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eDr. Kohn launched into a lengthy refutation, explaining why women could not learn those particular texts. “‘A woman’s wisdom is only in her spinning wheel,’” he quoted. “The sages say that if a man teaches his daughter Torah, it is as if he teaches her obscenities. A woman’s brain cannot handle Talmud.” Naftali leaned back in his chair, arms folded, lips curled in amusement as his father continued. “Rav Eliezer says that it is better that the words of the Torah are burned rather than given to women!”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMy heart thudded in my chest as I fumbled with my fork. Accepting, at least intellectually, the unyielding limits on women that I had been raised with, I wasn’t interested in the argument. I was watching Naftali.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eYeshivish 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBut I always held back. In Pennsylvania, when Mark Haviv had winked at me on Egret Boulevard, I’d whispered psalms to slow my heartbeat. I was the Yeshivish one. I was the rabbi’s daughter. I was the one admonishing my classmates to stop meeting boys behind the bakery. I was the one begging them to forget about some actor named Rad Pitt. I was the one imploring them to turn their hearts and minds to God.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBut in Manchester, where there were thousands of Yeshivish Jews, I was no longer God’s special emissary. No one was monitoring me as I watched Naftali across the Kohns’ Shabbos table.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eNaftali turned to Shalamit and me. “What do you think, girls? Want to learn Gemara?”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMy fingers went numb. My knife bounced on the table before flying to the carpet. Learn Gemara, I thought, the ancient books of Talmudic law and lore that men studied in yeshiva? I’d learn advanced astrophysics in Cantonese if Naftali wanted me to.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Don’t be stupid,” Shalamit spit out, blowing her lips in annoyance. “I have enough on my plate at school.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e • • • \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAs I was on my way out, later that afternoon, Naftali said good-bye.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Good to meet you, Leah.” He studied me with his head cocked, kippa sliding off his hair. A fleck of white frosting clung to his lip. “She’s a quiet one, isn’t she?” he said to his sister.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“I’m not quiet,” I managed to squeak out. “I just like listening.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Well, that’s a rare skill,” he said. I beamed at his approval.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e • • • \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eI did not know anyone my own age who had gone \u003ci\u003efrei\u003c\/i\u003e—literally, free. But I knew what happened to those who did. Sinning might seem like all bright lights and loud music, but being free had all the fun of a crazy carnival Tilt-A-Whirl—you’d be hurling in the gutter in no time. I had heard stories about those who left our Yeshivish community. They wound up drug addicts, prostitutes, or dead.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBut I’m not going \u003ci\u003efrei,\u003c\/i\u003e I reassured myself as I scribbled hearts in my diary. I’m not wearing pants. I’m not breaking Shabbos. I’m just having some feelings.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eA week later, I returned to the Kohns’ for another Friday night meal. I planned to disguise my hunger in a costume of spiritual yearning. \u003ci\u003eOh, Naftali, but what about the prohibition on women touching Torah scrolls? Doesn’t that point to a firm boundary?\u003c\/i\u003e I had rehearsed it all in my head. My mind was troubled. My soul hung in the balance. God would have to excuse me for speaking to a boy.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eI wore my other Shabbos outfit, a blue suit. The jacket was tight under my armpits and the stitching on the hem was coming loose, but the material was the same color as Naftali’s eyes.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhen I got to the Kohns’, Naftali was there, along with a guy from his Zionist youth group named Jacob. Jacob’s red plaid sweater signaled that he was even less religious than Naftali.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe concentration of testosterone in the room made me giddy. All through the meal I gripped my fork and knife, a smile plastered on my face as I swiveled my head, following Naftali, Jacob, and Dr. Kohn as they talked of Benjamin Netanyahu’s policies toward Israeli settlers.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAfter dinner I was shocked when Shalamit joined the boys in the living room, plopping herself down on the velvet couch.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Do you want to play cards?” Naftali asked. “Fifty-two pickup!” He laughed, tossing the pack in the air. Shalamit rolled her eyes.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“All right, all right,” he said. “Let’s play blackjack.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMy parents forbade cards, but I was too excited to care. We sat cross-legged on the balding carpet as Jacob and Naftali taught me the game. As Jacob dealt everyone a hand, the boys laughed about people they knew and some football team and their youth group.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Do—do you go to college also?” I managed to choke out in Jacob’s direction after I won my first round.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“I’m finishing sixth form,” he said. “I’m thinking about going to yeshiva in Israel next year, defer university.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eI felt a stab of triumph. Even a boy as irreligious as Jacob, a boy going to college, was going to go to yeshiva.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Are \u003ci\u003eyou\u003c\/i\u003e going to university?” Naftali asked, dealing out more cards. Both of our hands touched the same card for a single magical moment.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“N-no—” I stammered, jerking my fingers back. “Of course not—we don’t believe in”—I stumbled over the British phrasing—“uni—university.” \u003ci\u003eCollege boys and girls mixed and spent their time studying wasteful and immoral ideas.\u003c\/i\u003e I had recited this speech to my classmates back in Pennsylvania many times. Life on this earth was short, and every moment measured, judged, and precious. What person on their deathbed regretted that they had not written one more college paper or work memo? Doing God’s will, keeping his commandments, and taking care of one’s family was what mattered most. Especially for a woman. The outside world, with its short skirts and wolf-whistling men, demeaned women. What could be more beautiful than the sight of a mother lighting Shabbos candles, her children gathered at her side? College was a distraction, an invitation to a corrupt world that would only belittle a woman and seduce a man.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eNaftali shrugged. “I don’t see what’s wrong with it,” he said. “You can go to university and be religious. I do. Of course, you have to be smart enough,” he ribbed. “Is she smart enough, Shalamit?”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWe giggled.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Yes, you dummy, she’s smart,” Shalamit said. I loved how outspoken she was, how quick to defend me.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“You don’t want a career?” Jacob asked. “You want to be one of those women pushing a pram with a million babies, jumping when their husband says jump?”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Jump!” Naftali ordered. From his seated position, Jacob gave himself a wobbly little push off the floor, his eyes rolled back in his head. We all laughed.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhat Jacob had described was what I had always wanted more than anything else, but I suddenly felt ashamed of it.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“What about your mother?” Naftali asked. “Do you want to live the life that she’s lived? What’s she like?”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eI had never tried to describe my mother. Like the Shabbos or the sky, Mamme was an immovable force woven into the reality of the world. I didn’t know how old she was—my parents kept that information sacred, as part of their distant, godly personas—but I did know that she’d been born in Leeds. Her father had died when she was twelve, and her mother had suffered a nervous breakdown. My mother had come to America for a match, looking to escape gossip about her broken family. My father occasionally retold the story of how, on one of their arranged dates, my mother had insisted that she wasn’t hungry, but after he’d dropped her off, he had watched her enter a bakery and devour a sweet pastry. By the time I knew her, my mother was a plump and quiet woman, taciturn when annoyed.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Penguin Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46302485577957,"sku":"NP9780143127413","price":24.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780143127413.jpg?v=1767724387","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/cut-me-loose-isbn-9780143127413","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}