November 16, 2018 – Tablet

Leaving the ultra-Orthodox community is nothing new in Israel. Everyone, secular or religious, knows someone who used to be on, but is now ‘œoff the derech.’ But the phenomenon hasn’t been well studied. Most of what we know comes from individual stories of people making the difficult transition from the insular Haredi world to mainstream Israeli society.

Now there is data to flesh out these stories, in the form of a report commissioned by the Israeli nonprofit Out For Change. The report provides a picture of ex-Haredim in unprecedented detail, estimating how many people leave Haredi communities each year, and describing who they are and why they leave. It also discusses new programs to serve the needs of ex-Haredim, many of them partnerships between nonprofits and the Israeli government. Still, it argues that much more must done to support ex-Haredim in the ways they deserve.

Read the full article here.