Photography courtesy of Julia Haart
Author and Netflix star Julia Haart
When Julia Haart began writing her memoir, Brazen, back in 2017, it had only been a handful of years since, as she writes in her author’s note, she “time traveled to the twenty-first century.”
Haart was living in an “ultra-Orthodox” Jewish community, in Monsey, New York. As she details in the book, the way she ran her household, the way she raised her children, what she cooked, what she wore, what she believed—everything—was overseen by men. So at 42, she left.
Courtesy of Julia Haart
“It was a journey born of such unendurable misery that I had to flee or die,” she writes. “I walked into a world in which no one knew me. I had no past, no shared history. I was a zero. Now I pursue zeros of a very different kind for thousands of women around the world.”
Netflix viewers might know Haart from her hit docuseries My Unorthodox Life, which shows the formerly frum woman living in Tribeca and working as CEO of Elite World Group, a conglomerate of modeling agencies (Haart has since left that post). Brazen is the front half of Haart’s life—more about her childhood, married life in Monsey, and how she left the community, designed her own shoe line, and became creative director of the luxury intimates brand La Perla. Haart comes to St. Louis on Thursday as part of the St. Louis Jewish Book Festival’s Women’s Night.
St. Louis doesn’t have a large ultra-Orthodox population like New York does. What can readers of Brazen who aren’t Jewish or even religious take away from your book?
To me, it isn't about religion at all. The things that I went through have nothing to do with Judaism. I think the biggest proof of that is that you see these laws in every kind of fundamentalist community, whether it's Mennonite or Muslim or extremist Christians or Mormons. It's about archaic ancient laws that keep women down and that need to go.
I [also] meet women from every walk of life, every country, and they may not be in the fundamentalist community, but they have been taught their entire life that they can't, and they feel that it's too late and there's no more possibility of change. The whole purpose of writing [Brazen] was to show people that you can change, that you can seize control of your life, that it's never too late. … I think today, with what's happening with Roe v. Wade, and this wave of [thought that] women should be in the kitchen and having babies, so many women think that they can't.
It’s interesting you bring up abortion health care. Have you been to St. Louis before?
I have been to St. Louis. I was 19, religious, with a wig on my head. The last time I went, I was an ultra-Orthodox teenager.
I ask because there were points in the book, when you talked about sex and reproductive health, that reminded me of what happened this year. Missouri has a trigger law that went into effect in June. I think that feeling of a lack of agency or control would resonate with some people here.
I think we are living through a time where the rest of the world is veering to the way I lived my life, and it's pretty frightening. I've seen and I experienced what that's like. And I see that trend happening in this country right now.
We as a country are also experiencing a rise in antisemitic incidents. What does it mean to you to participate in this festival that is about exploring and celebrating the Jewish experience through the written word?
I think we're facing a very strong foe that understands that if they succeed in dividing us, we will not be able to win. We are living through a time when you have people exacerbating divisiveness and fomenting hatred, so that the ethnicities who have been racially profiled and attacked don't get together and fight against the common enemy. Jewish women, Black women, Chinese women, Muslim women—we have all suffered a lot. What unites us is so much more than what divides us, but by constantly seeing these attacks and the antisemitism that's happening, the anti-Asia hatred, all of this together, is creating divisiveness within the ethnicities so they don't gather together and fight the common enemy. We need to see past that. We need to not just hold people accountable, but also we need to hold hands with each other and speak to one another. The fact that there is so much antisemitism right now, happening openly in this country, is extraordinarily frightening. … To me, literature and stories have the power to change the world. And I think that my story is one that’s applicable to any race, to any person. I think the more stories we share with each other, the more we open our hearts and minds to one another. That's how we eradicate hatred.
Women’s Night with Julia Haart begins at 5 p.m. on Thursday, November 10, with a Boutique Bazaar and pre-event reception in the Edison Gymnasium at the Staenberg Family Complex in Creve Coeur. The presentation begins at 7 p.m. Season 2 of My Unorthodox Life airs on Netflix on December 2.
