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Beyond Today

How do you walk away from your ultra-religious community?

Beyond Today

BBC

News

4.61.1K Ratings

🗓️ 24 January 2019

⏱️ 19 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Izzy Posen looks and seems like a normal student. But his life before university was far from the norm. He grew up in an ultra-Orthodox Hasidic Jewish community in North London, speaking no English and attending an illegal school. This is the story of a man who chose to leave everything he knew behind, and the freedom and anguish that came with that decision. Reporter: Alice Porter Producer: Harriet Noble Mixed by: Nico Raufast Editor: John Shields

Transcript

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0:00.0

BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts.

0:04.6

Hello, I'm Tina Dehealey.

0:08.4

This is Beyond Today from BBC Radio 4,

0:11.3

a space to ask one big question about one big story. Today, how do you walk away from your ultra-religious community?

0:27.0

Identity is a theme we keep returning to on Beyond Today. What makes us who we are and who we choose to be?

0:40.0

A little while ago, a journalist from elsewhere in the BBC came to us with a story that was right up our street.

0:46.1

It's the story of a man who's made a huge choice about who he wants to be, one that's going to shape the rest of his life.

0:53.4

I'll team for the health is Erthic.

0:56.4

But me, Scava Eunish, Kerviselle him, the Waikas and all of these aches.

1:00.4

Alice, welcome to beyond today. You came to us with this story. Who have we just heard from?

1:07.2

So we've just heard from Isie Poisson, he's 23-year-old young man who's currently at university, but his journey of going to

1:15.3

university I think was quite unusual. We've heard earlier there that was Yiddish and

1:19.9

that was the language he knew growing up. He grew up as a Hasidic Jew, and he grew up in Stamford Hill and London

1:27.3

within the Hasidic Jewish community.

1:29.3

He eventually made the difficult decision to leave his community and I met him in his new life at Bristol

1:34.8

University. What's he like as a person? What does he look like? What's his personality like?

1:40.1

He appears like a completely normal student.

1:42.6

I mean, he's got brown hair, sort of average height,

1:45.4

sort of often dressed in sort of, you know, shirt and jeans.

1:48.5

He's very funny, incredibly eloquent.

1:51.2

He's one of the most eloquent people I've ever met actually.

1:54.6

We are going to hear from him, but before we do, how are Hasidic Jews different from other

...

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