Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
News

Woman Who Left Hasidic Community Jumps to Death From Rooftop Bar

A 30-year-old tech entrepreneur who left her Hasidic community jumped to her death from a 20th-floor rooftop bar in Manhattan’s trendy Flatiron District.

READ: Why the Whole Orthodox World Is Complicit in Faigy Mayer’s Death

Faigy Mayer, 30, plunged off the roof of 230 Fifth Rooftop Bar on West 27th Street Monday night in an apparent suicide, a New York police spokesman told Gothamist.

Mayer was the founder, CEO and iOS Developer of Appton, a startup specializing in mobile apps. She was a graduate student of Accounting at CUNY. According to her Twitter profile, she identifies as a “Former hasid who codes in iOS. Love coding, beacons, bacon, the appleWatch and life!”

Mayer was also a member of Footsteps, a group that provides “social and emotional support, educational and vocational guidance, workshops and social activities, and access to resources” to members of the ultra-Orthodox community that wish to leave.

Friends on her Facebook page said Mayer struggled with depression.

The New York Post spoke to witness Dale Martin, who said, “I was walking across the street and I saw she was falling.”

Another witness, Becky Whittemore was at the bar and told the Post, “There was a big corporate party up there and she kind of ran through them and jumped.”

Eliyahu Fink, a former rabbi at the Pacific Jewish Center, said he did not know Mayer personally. They shared several common friends and she followed him on Facebook. Tuesday morning, he wrote a long post about how the Orthodox community should do more for suicide prevention and acceptance. He never mentioned Mayer by name.

He told the Forward, “As a community, we must do a better job loving unconditionally. Too many people make their relationships dependent on religious observance. This compounds the trauma and loneliness for those who leave.”

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.