Former Haredi girl becomes fashion stylist

So here's an interview with a former resident of a Haredi clan who became a fashion designer after being expelled from school over petty issue. First:

Chumi Polak is a familiar name in Israel’s fashion industry: a busy stylist who works on productions, commercials and with artists. But many people only recently learned her name in a very different context, as the partner of musician and judge Assaf Amdursky, whom she has been dating for the past year and a half. Polak had also dressed Amdursky over the years, and when the timing was right, love followed. [...]

Amdursky is 55 and you are 36, a 19-year age gap.

“That’s true, but there’s a difference between a 20-year-old woman dating a 40-year-old man and a gap like this at our age,” she said. “I think the age difference becomes much less significant. Assaf is Peter Pan, someone who is constantly in motion. He’s a second-year film student and also plans to pursue a doctorate. He is always doing something, he takes care of himself and he looks wow.

“I’ve also been through a thing or two, and I feel very mature. I don’t think I could be with a man in his 30s. I feel Assaf is a man who knows what he wants, and I love that.”

Oh, it's okay for a 20 year old woman to date a 40 year old man. Such things are practically discussed in the Torah/Bible too, and from a modern perspective, if the lady is 18 and up, then it's perfectly legal and in good taste. Now, on the background of the fashionista herself:

Polak’s appearance, an edgy blonde with a cool haircut and hipster style, gives little hint that she came from a completely different world. She was born in Jerusalem to a Haredi family, the eldest of six children. “Chumi is short for Nechama,” she said. “My mother called me that from a young age and it stuck. It’s a name that always raises questions and I always explain it. In recent years, I’ve even started introducing myself again as Nechama. Nechama Miriam Pearl Polak.”

Her mother was born in London, “a Yiddish-speaking Haredi woman who came to Israel and married my Haredi father. I have a wonderful family and amazing parents, and I am very close to everyone. On the other hand, I was always something a little unusual in that landscape.

“I felt people didn’t understand me. I asked questions in a society where questions were not encouraged. I was stubborn, someone who stood her ground, not the kind of good, obedient girl who tries to please everyone. I was a bit wild and hyperactive. I had character.”

Polak grew up “in a very Haredi neighborhood” and studied at Bais Yaakov girls' school until ninth grade, when her family moved to Bnei Brak. “My father became close to a certain admor (Hasidic rebe), and my parents moved to live in his court,” she said.

What happened?

“One day we had a free period at the seminary, and my cousin, another friend and I ran away to the beach through a hole in the fence,” she said. “We rolled up our tights and our skirts and got our feet wet in the water.

“That evening, an older red-haired man came to my parents’ door with a letter saying someone had seen us and that I was suspended from school immediately. They demanded that we apologize and sign a code of conduct bylaw. My mother begged me to do it, but I refused. I didn’t feel I had done anything so terrible that I needed to apologize. My cousin and the other friend apologized, signed and were allowed back. I was expelled.”

In the Haredi community, she said, being expelled from one school makes it difficult to be accepted to another. “That’s how I found myself without any framework for half a year, and people more or less shut me out,” she said. “Before that, I had been very popular in class. Suddenly, no one called. Silence.” “During that half year, I had free time, I started going out and discovered the world. A little before I turned 16, I moved to Jerusalem. I had a few friends there who were older than me. I moved in with them and started waitressing. I was still religious and waitressed in long skirts. After half a year, I moved to London.”

It's a bold step. “Yes,” she said. “I did extreme, dramatic things without fear and without much thought. I’m more measured today, but that’s my nature. I’m impulsive and I’m not afraid. No one in my family left home or left religion, but I just did. I flew to London without thinking it through, with 100 pounds in my pocket.

“I had a friend there who worked at mall carts, and I have a British passport because of my mother. I sold hair and beauty products from carts inside stores like Harrods and Selfridges and made a lot of money. The pound was worth eight shekels, and sometimes I would make 1,000 pounds a day.”

Well see, when certain segments of society act so petty, that's certainly atrocious, and seriously, she was right to leave the Haredi community where she was born. Her parents shouldn't have been part of it either. It also says here that:

Have you already left religion at that stage?

“It took some time. But I remember that Shabbat in London when I was 17, when I left the house and ordered a hamburger with bacon. Both Shabbat and bacon. I woke up in the morning and said, ‘Okay, let’s see what happens,’ and nothing happened. It was cool.

“I never had an issue with Judaism. I just wanted to see everything. But faith always stayed in me, and actually the older I get, the more I return to religion. For the past five years, I’ve been eating kosher again, and I also keep Shabbat once a month. It does me good. When I visit my parents, I always dress modestly.”

Perhaps she shouldn't, although good for her she resumed kosher eating again. But that sex-negative hysteria has got to go, because it's having a ruinous effect on women's confidence and dignity, and we could seriously do without it. It's also alluded to at the end:

How would you define your style?

“I’m very eclectic, and every day I can be someone else. I love vintage and mixing designer pieces with vintage, but not anything too revealing. Even as a stylist, I don’t dress people very exposed. I don’t like it. The Bais Yaakov girl stayed in me.

“You’ll never see me in tank tops or flip-flops. It just doesn’t feel refined to me. I also work a lot with the Haredi sector. I understand the nuances and subtleties, what is allowed and what isn’t, the language, and the trends there.

“To this day, I still have amazing pleated skirts from seminary. There’s no style like that. I shortened one into a mini and gave it a Miu Miu feel, and left another as a midi. It’s wow, and it’s chic.”

Again, this is a weakness she has to overcome. It's the personality that matters, not whether the clothing is modest or revealing. I hope she'll come to understand that, and she doesn't need to do business with the Haredi segment, unless perhaps to help convince them to leave it. That could be very helpful, considering the Satmar, if any, have been one of the worst 5th columns for decades now.