Escape From the Holy Shtetl

The saga of Gitty, the child of Chabad BTs dropping out via Kiryas Joel (not as romantic as Ben Chorin imagines it). New York Magazine: The Jewish-American Saga of Gitty Grunwald and Her Daughter.

“Matty Feinman picks up the story: “One night, Chaim says to meet him at Columbus Circle so we can settle this once and for all. I went on the subway with a chinning bar stuck into my pants. The cops had to come. The guy was crazy. Violent. Abusive. Last I heard, he was in Israel riding a donkey, yelling about Rebbe Schneerson being Jesus Christ.”

Following the dissolution of her marriage to Chaim, Deborah left the Lubavitchers, taking Gitty and her two siblings to join the austere Satmars in Kiryas Joel, where she married Avrum Schwartz and had three more children.

While thankful the Satmars took Deborah in, Matty saw little improvement. “The Lubavitchers, they have a joy about them. The Satmars are nuts. They tell you the State of Israel shouldn’t exist because the Messiah hasn’t come yet, that the Holocaust was God’s way of punishing Jews for Zionism. It makes you sick.”

Note the between the lines devastating portrait of the Chulent crowd in the article. (via 7fatcow)