Finding My Own Voice

Judith Rotem’s journey took her from an Orthodox Hungarian lifestyle, through a concentration camp as a baby, to life on an Israeli moshav and later in the religious town Bnei-Brak. Struggling with life as an Orthodox Jew, she finally divorced her husband and left the community along with her seven children. Her writing focuses on the world she abandoned, and on the difficult condition of Haredi women.

Risa Domb is Director of the Centre for Modern Hebrew Studies at Cambridge.

Judith Rotem began working as a ghost writer to support her seven children and later wrote five books, four of which are loosely based on the ultra-orthodox society. Her latest is Distant Sisters: The Women I Left Behind.