I'm Living a Double Life in My Hasidic Jewish Community

In one of the final scenes of Titanic, the steward asks Rose her name. Rose realizes she will now start a new life on her own terms. She takes a deep breath, looks up toward the Statue of Liberty and replies: “Dawson. Rose Dawson.”

When I watched that scene, I paused the screen and replayed it again and again. I shed bitter tears. Would I ever get to do that? Would the day come when I find the exit of this confusing maze, the moment when I take a deep breath and announce “This is the true me”?

It was one trigger of many that constantly pervade my thoughts in my double life as a secretly non-believing Hasid. Every day, I feel like a prisoner of my own existence.

It wasn’t always this way.

Growing up in a Hasidic home, I found solace and deep meaning in the Hasidic lifestyle. Without television or movies—and a self-sufficient ecosystem from schools and businesses to medical services and welfare organizations—the community’s deliberate isolation created a reality in which the outside world was irrelevant. It was almost like an entire country within a city. I found fulfilment within those boundaries through meditation, Torah study, and prayer.

When I turned 19, my father told me that a girl had been suggested for me, and I concurred that I was ready to go ahead. We were engaged on the same day we met, and are now 10 years married.

Discovering the internet was a new lease on life and there was no going back.

My wife and I are very different personality types; that was clear from the get go. But as a pious, young, idealistic Hasid, what I sought in a wife was someone whose religious values aligned with my own and with whom I could hold a conversation. Marriage, we were taught, was to build a sanctuary for God where we would pursue good deeds and raise a good family.

Shortly after our wedding, our daughter was born and I took a job. It was then that I met the internet for the first time. 

On the dreaded internet, I learned about comparative religion, evolution, and biblical criticism. I would binge-watch Simon Cowell’s talent shows, and I loved the creativity and the narratives of people from simple backgrounds who were achieving their dreams. I was also taken by the melting pot of cultures and beliefs that these shows represented. The more I watched them, the more I realized that contrary to what we’d been taught all along, non-Jews were not our secret enemies and we could be part of everything that capitalism had to offer.

I was astounded to discover a thriving, colorful society; a world where freedom and enlightenment were core values, not pejoratives; where individual expression was virtuous rather than a problem; where people-pleasing was a failure and pleasure a common goal. For me, it was a new lease on life and there was no going back.

When I was immersed in the internet, I imagined myself as a free man. I was pursuing my artistic calling, learning all the latest fashion trends, and looking cool and sexy. I was in university filling my thirsty mind with knowledge of a world I now realize I knew nothing about, all the while dancing the nights away with friends at the nightclubs. I was traveling the world, seeing places I had learned about on YouTube, and marveling at the astounding diversity of the human race. I was falling in love with a beautiful woman so deeply that she had the power to break my heart. I was watching my daughter chase her dreams in a world where girls had unprecedented opportunities.

But then reality would hit me like a ton of bricks. One look in the mirror and I’d see a Hasidic man sporting a strange hairstyle and a large black velvet yarmulke, locked in an arranged marriage with a wife I was sincerely trying to love and a child who was being raised in what I saw as a cult.

I live with an endless circle of self-doubt: the pull to isolate myself from my community.

I saw a man who had missed those carefree college years of exploration and achievement, instead completing a military-style, dawn-to-dusk religious studies program in an isolated yeshiva campus away from the “impure street.” My modest academic goals were way out of my reach, because how would I start from scratch as a married man with family responsibilities who had spent most waking hours from age 12 to 24 studying ancient Aramaic-language Jewish texts? How could I escape the insufferable existence of living with people whose values I did not share and whose customs I did not believe in, and having to keep silent and just fit in? Even the future of my marriage seemed bleak since the main common ground we had held—our values and worldview—were no longer common at all.

I could not just divorce and do my own thing. That would be catastrophic, as most people who left the community lifestyle simultaneously lost their children for good. That was a prospect my heart could not tolerate.

Once I had tasted from the forbidden fruit, I was cursed. I was tied by an impossible knot to my wife through my daughter, and I could not fulfill my dreams. I tried to hide it from my wife, but after some time I realized that if I was a prisoner in my own home, my life was not worth living. I braced, and told her.

Many other “double-lifers” have been forced to divorce their spouses, and I was expecting the same. To my amazement, my wife looked me in the eyes and said, “I love you the way you are and I want the marriage to remain intact.” Our relationship was one of mutual respect and companionship, she asserted, even above faith. We reached an agreement that in private I could do things like using my phone on Shabbos (one of the most outrageous transgressions), but in front of my wife and daughter I would remain observant, and we would have an ultra-orthodox household. 

Initially, her rare open-mindedness was a weight off my shoulders, but my relief has been short-lived. I still have to live with this cognitive dissonance every day of my life.

Over the past few years, I’ve come to appreciate every small step that I achieve. The soul-wrenching but rewarding experience of trusting and connecting with new like-minded friends, learning how to use gym equipment, finding hobbies and talents, and progressing through education starting from secondary school level. The courage and patience taking the baby-steps transition to a neater and trendier look when I’m outside and alone in the neighborhood, while simultaneously trying to adhere to the Hasidic dress code. The constant self-reassurance that there’s nothing wrong with me even though people whisper behind my back. 

I so appreciate every person with whom I’ve crossed paths who doesn’t judge me for my sometimes awkward character, questionable fashion sense, or wide-eyed curiosity as I peek out from under the rock. I appreciate the support organization for ex-Hasids that gave me career advice and an amazing therapist to whom I owe so much, and those ex-Hasids who have provided invaluable guidance and more than anything, for giving their heart.

Still, I live with an endless circle of self-doubt: the yearning; the pull to isolate myself from the community and familiarize myself with mainstream colloquialisms, etiquette, values, and way of life; the urge to escape the ritual purity laws which prohibit my wife and me to touch or even hand something over for two weeks each menstrual cycle, a cruel game that often causes me to shut down sexually, causing us both distress. I constantly battle against the choice I’ve made to live with these sacrifices for my lovely daughter, so that she has a doting father, and so that I can open her mind to more moderate ideologies and acceptable values. But should I be forfeiting my happiness for hers?

This is not just my story. This is the story of scores of Hasidic men and women, some who I know, many that I don’t. Double-lifers, as we’re called, exercise extreme caution and suspicion before deciding to open up to anyone, even close friends. The consequences of being outed can be brutal.

But we are here. I’m here.