Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Faigy Mayer Slammed Hasidic Lifestyle in Essay — Week Before Suicide

Faigy Mayer, an ex-Hasid who leapt to her death, had recently shared with a friend “the first draft of an opinion article” outlining her problems with Hasidic Judaism.

Mayer’s friend Chaim Levin shared the 1,500-word draft with the media on Tuesday, one day after Mayer, 30, jumped from a rooftop bar in Manhattan.

Mayer opened the essay by detailing her difficulty making friends as a child, writing that “until I left the religion of Hasidic Judaism at the age of 24, I would not have any friends.”

The piece, which uses adjectives like “austere” and “harsh” to describe Hasidic life, argued that Hasidic boys are “subjected to the torture of learning Yiddish all day” and recalled her skepticism while attending a required class on the laws of kashrut.

“Without knowing I was agnostic, I refused to study rules that were clearly not applicable to 2001,” she wrote.

Mayer argued that “Hasidic Judaism shouldn’t exist at all,” and that “it is not fair” to her three nephews that they are being raised subject to the community’s strict rules.

“Basic joys that American kids get on a daily basis my nephews don’t have,” she wrote. “Instead, they have long hours at a Cheder, which is a boys’ school, where they are forced to sit in one place and study Jewish laws and history with ZERO time for sports.”

The Internet, Mayer theorized, will eventually eliminate Hasidic Judaism because as applying for basic government services requires online access, Hasidic individuals will have to go online, where they might be exposed to new ideas.

“IF PEOPLE WERE ALLOWED TO THINK, THEY WOULD NOT BE RELIGIOUS,” she wrote.

Mayer concluded: “Thinking analytically when it comes to basic life decisions is something new to me and something I still struggle with, 5 years after leaving.”

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.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

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.