Raheli (not her real name), 27, the eldest of seven siblings, grew up and was educated in haredi settings in a small city in central Israel. She told me she always felt something was different about her.
“As a child it was easy to understand exactly who and what I was,” she said. “I wasn’t exactly like the other girls, but I also didn’t know how to put it in words. When I was a little girl I played soccer with the neighbourhood boys and spend a lot of time with them. When I was 12 they separated me from the boys, because that’s the age that you begin to become a young woman, and a young woman must be modest.”
“I no longer has male friends at that point, but I also didn’t have thoughts about men and I wasn’t interested in them like a regular pubescent girl,” Raheli continued. “Ultimately, when I turned 18, my father realised he needed to search for a match for me and I got engaged very quickly.”
Read the whole story about Raheli at ynetnews.com
Haredi Judaism is a stream of Orthodox Judaism characterised by rejection of modern secular culture. Its members are often referred to as strictly Orthodox or ultra-Orthodox in English.
