Izzy Posen in The Guardian

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A ‘tumultuous journey’ from ultra-Orthodox school to physics degree

hroughout his childhood, Izzy Posen was a bright boy with a curious mind. At school, he worked hard, with long hours of study stretching late into the evenings. He was a shining example to his nine younger siblings.

Prof. Solomon Schimmel’s Story

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My Personal Struggle with Unreasonable Belief – TheTorah.com

For years, I have been studying Orthodox Judaism and exploring the question of how it is that modern, highly educated people can make unreasonable faith claims.[1] Specifically, how is it that Modern Orthodox Jews, in the face of overwhelming evidence and logical arguments, believe that God revealed the entirety of the Pentateuch, word for word, to Moses at Sinai and/or in the wilderness?[2] How do these people deal with the facts and arguments that challenge this central religious belief of Torah-Mi-Sinai?


Prof.Solomon Schimmel

Podcast about Off the Derech by Jonathan Gabay

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Off the Derech – The choice to leave the Chosen People. A documentary about Cults and power – Thought and Leaders

Cults in 2020 are closer to home than you assume.Rather than being exceptions, cults are becoming sub-cultures of the world’s major Judea-Islamic- Christian faiths. In such closed communities, leaders believe that strength lies in similarities rather than differences. To protect perceptions and i…

A New Book on Leaving Judaism

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A new book has come out on the topic of the OTD Phenomenon, called Degrees of Separation, Identity Formation While Leaving Ultra-Orthodox Judaism:

Zalman Newfield’s book is called Degrees of Separation: Identity Formation While Leaving Ultra-Orthodox Judaism. Using this link, you can read the first chapter of the book for free.

Ruth Borovski, OTD, from Jerusalem

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She’d never seen a smartphone or heard a radio before she fled. She’s racing to catch up.

JERUSALEM – Ruth Borovski, doing a bit of homework, sat in a library and Googled “phosphate” on her smartphone. That could not have happened 19 months earlier, when Borovski was a 27-year-old living within one of Israel’s cloistered ultra-Orthodox Jewish sects. Then, she had never heard of phosphate. Or of smartphones.