ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the analysis of narratives told by men and women who grew up in Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) families in the United States and Israel, and who left the encapsulated communities in which they were raised. Haredi communities engage in a daily round of life that is immersed in Jewish tradition. The existence of tightly knit communities in the Haredi world makes it difficult for yotzi'im to construct exit narratives. The narratives yotzi'im tell do not convey a sense of progression from chaos to certainty but rather a movement from a false certainty to a more ambiguous and self-constructed reality. By focusing on the main character, Leah, the chapter shows how both the exiting process and exit narratives are shaped by structural factors. It demonstrates the methodological point that narratives are useful for learning about the influence of particular social structures on individual accounts, as well as for what they can convey about actual social processes.
