Haaretz, Jul 13, 2016

“The Haredi world is very difficult to live in. I had a lot of frustration, I went through that charade for the kids’ sake. But at a certain stage I could no longer live that duality,” Rivka said of her decision to leave the lifestyle behind.

Rivka said she never imagined the divorce would also tear her away from her four sons and two daughters.

According to Rivka and her lawyer, her ex-husband won a rabbinical court order barring her from any contact with their children except for weekly visitation at a community center in the town where he lives. She finds the public nature of these meetings awkward for maintaining the kind of intimate ties a mother and her children ought to have.

Once a session at the center was interrupted when someone there thought her dress too immodest, her lawyer, Yisrael Weisblatt, said.

Rivka says she was also kept away from a son’s recent bar mitzvah and two teenage daughters refuse to see her at all.