Off the Derech

Combines powerful first-person accounts with incisive scholarly analysis to understand the phenomenon of ultra-Orthodox Jews who leave their insular communities and venture into the wider world. In recent years, many formerly ultra-Orthodox Jews have documented leaving their communities in published stories, films, and memoirs. This movement is often identified as "off the derech " (OTD), or off the path, with the idea that the "path" is paved by Jewish law, rituals, and practices found within t