Leaving Hasidic/ Ultra-Orthodox Judaism: A review of Netflix's 'Unorthodox'

Aliyah Saleem is joined by Terri O'Sullivan and Esther Davis to review Netflix's 'Unorthodox' which follows the story of Esther Shapiro who flees her Hasidic/ Ultra-Orthodox Jewish community in Brooklyn, USA. Based on Deborah Feldman's story and book Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots, it raises important issues and questions about leaving high control religions and communities.
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Author Biographies:
Aliyah Saleem:
Faith to Faithless founder and author, Aliyah Saleem. Aliyah was born into a Sunni family and was educated at an Islamic girls' private boarding school in Nottingham before studying Islamic theology in Pakistan. Today, she is an advocate for secular education and in 2015 co-founded Faith to Faithless to raise awareness of apostasy in the UK. In 2018 she published her first book, 'Leaving Faith Behind’.
Esther Davis:
Esther was raised in a Hasidic Jewish community in Stamford Hill and she left her religion 5 year years ago. You can read her blog The Diary of OTD Girl diaryofanotdgirl.wordpress.co...
/ otdgirl
Terri O'Sullivan:
Terri set up XJW Friends in 2007 for former Jehovah's Witnesses to meet up, share their experiences and make friends. In 2012 she did her masters in social psychology at Tilburg University in the Netherlands researching the relationship between ostracism and religious fundamentalism. Ste Richardsson took over the running of the group where he started museum tours XJW Rainbow for LGBT+ exJW's. They now together co-run XJW Friends and have started doing online socials and quizzes since the lockdown.
xjwfriends.com/?fbclid=IwAR2M...

[@EfrainRiveraJunior]

So soon as we left the Jehovah's Witnesses Cult, my wife donated all her clothes and bought a miniskirt.

[@miriamfox4489]

An excellent discussion. Thanks - especially to you Esther for describing it so coherently and well.

[@diaryofanotdgirl89]

Thanks so much for being so brave and outspoken about your own experiences. The more of us who speak up, the more informed people will be.

[@spooksya]

I myself left the JWs cult around 2013/14. Been a happy “apostate” ever since! Gonna have to check that out on Netflix.

[@travishillsthedarkangelbun504]

Bless you ✝️ all for a start.

[@justmadeit2]

High control groups, I uploaded a couple of videos on them. To see them just type in the search bar above..... 'High control groups'

[@diaryofanotdgirl89]

Will do!

[@justmadeit2]

@@diaryofanotdgirl89 Hi. Great! When you type in 'High control groups' it should bring up 2 or 3 videos with my username. I'm interested in all this stuff because I have family members who converted as adults to be Jehovah's Witnesses, then one older sister left her husband and remarried so the religion disfellowshipped her and she is being shunned by another family member for not returning to the religion. Greetings from Manchester