Forget the New Yorker cover. This week's most memorable magazine front page is actually New York's: "What's A Nice Girl Like This Doing Fighting the Hasids for Her Baby?"
This story is so involving, and the damsel at its center so captivating, you'll be calling your legislator by the time your halfway done...
Here's a brief rundown (sorry if we fudge a few details-- it's a long story and we're exhausted just from reading it):
Gitty Grunwald grew up under the Satmar Hasidim in the town of Kiryas Joel, or KJ, in New York's Catskills. At the age of 17, she was forced to marry a total stranger, who gave her daughter Esther Miriam, now 4.
Once, when Esther Miriam was a baby, Gitty took her for a walk. "A guy looked into the carriage," Gitty recalls. "He said how cute Esther Miriam was and went on his way. It was nice. But then these minivans came tearing down the street. Hasid jump out and surround me, screaming, 'Who was that guy? What did he want?'
It was the Vaad Hatznius, KJ's moral police, who Gitty refers to as "those stupid Talibans."
It only gets worse from there, but we'll spare you the continued horror. Or most of it.
In KJ, women are considered "impure" while on their periods, and isolated from their husbands. After the menstruation period appears to end, women are then forced "to wear white underwear for seven days, checking constantly to see if there's any discharge. Should spotting occur," a woman is forced to present her underwear to a rabbi who examines the stain, then decides whether to send the woman to a ritual bath before reuniting her with her husband.
Refusing to bend to these sorts of rules made her husband turn on her. He even yelled at her for the perceived sexuality in a hug she shared with her grandfather. Soon after, Yoely, the husband, made a critical mistake: he let her use the internet.
"Once I read blogs from people who had gotten out of places like KJ, there was no turning back..."
In 2007, Gitty fled KJ, having realized she "didn't want to be one of those women who pop out babies every eighteen months and think whatever their husbands tell them to." She lived in Brooklyn with her daughter, spending time with her grandparents (who want no part of the "cult") in Manhattan. Then, one day
as Esther Miriam was walking with her class to a Flatbush playground, she was taken... Esther Miriam said they were wearing masks.
Readers will surely agree with Gitty's assumption that her husband was behind the kidnapping. The craziest part is, now Gitty has to fight for custody in both secular and rabbinical courts, while thanking her lucky stars for a precious few hours in her daughter's presence every so often. While her possibly doomed case moves through the courts (the Hasidic community has power lawyers, a positive drug test from Gitty, and a potential remarriage for her now-ex-husband to throw at our girl), Gitty is learning who Che Guevara, Keith Richards, and Billie Holiday are:
"Wow, Billie Holiday is a woman?"
Then Gitty’s cell phone rang. It was Esther Miriam. The call was court-ordered, ruled by the Orange County judge after hearing that Yoely’s family refused to pick up when Gitty called to talk to her daughter.
“Mommy,” came the high-pitched voice, audible even with the J train rumbling on overhead. “Esther Miriam!” Gitty replied. When Esther Miriam asked when she would see her mother again, Gitty brushed a stray tear from her eye and said, “Soon … very soon.”
The nine-page story is here, via New York Magazine.