Cut Me Loose: Sin and Salvation After My Ultra-Orthodox Girlhood

＂Visceral and uplifting.＂ -- The Daily Beast

A raw and electrifying memoir about a young woman’s journey from self-destruction to redemption, after cutting ties with her ultra-Orthodox Jewish family

For fans of the television series Unorthodox and Shtisel, this brutally honest memoir tells the story of one woman’s quest to define herself as an individual. Leah Vincent was born into the Yeshivish community, an ultra-Orthodox Jewish sect. As the daughter of an influential rabbi, she was taught to worship two things: God, and the men who ruled their society.
Then, at sixteen, Leah was caught exchanging letters with a boy, violating religious law that forbids contact between members of the opposite sex. Shunned by her family, she was cast out of her home, alone and adrift in New York City, unprepared for the freedoms of secular life and unaccustomed to the power and peril inherent in her own sexuality. Fast-paced, harrowing, mesmerizing, and ultimately triumphant, Leah’s story illuminates both the oppressive world of religious fundamentalism and the broader issues facing young women of all backgrounds.

Leah Vincent is a writer and an activist. A first-generation college student, Leah went on to earn a Master’s in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School as a Pforzheimer Fellow. Leah now works on projects that address social justice within ultra-Orthodoxy, the rise of Jewish fundamentalism, and the female experience of shame. Her essays have appeared in The New York Times, Salon, Unpious, ZEEK, The Daily Beast and The Jewish Daily Forward.