Sister of ex-Hasidic woman who committed suicide hangs self
Sara Mayer was found by family in their home at the heart of the Belz community of Borough Park, Brooklyn
Raoul Wootliff is a former Times of Israel political correspondent and Daily Briefing podcast producer.
New York police say the sister of an ex-Hasidic woman who committed suicide in July has died after hanging herself.
Thirty-one-year-old Sara Mayer was discovered by her family Sunday afternoon in their Borough Park home in Brooklyn, according to the New York Daily News. She is known to have suffered from mental illness and has been hospitalized on a number of occasions, the report said.
Police said Sara Mayer was scheduled to move into a group home this week, in an effort to deal with her depression and mental illness. She was home to pick up belongings before the move.
Four months ago, her younger sister Faigy Mayer jumped to her death from a 20-story Manhattan rooftop bar.
Police believed that 30-year-old Mayer jumped deliberately during a party at the 230 Fifth restaurant and lounge in the Flatiron District.
Faigy Mayer grew up with her family in the Belz Hasidic community of Williamsburg and Borough Park in Brooklyn, but decided to leave and adopt a secular lifestyle in her 20s.
She had spoken openly about the emotional difficulties she faced after leaving the close-knit religious community. A struggle considered to have been a contributing factor to her suicide.
Before she died Mayer had shared with a friend “the first draft of an opinion article” outlining her problems with Hasidic Judaism.
The piece, which uses adjectives like “austere” and “harsh” to describe Hasidic life, argued that Hasidic boys are “subjected to the torture of learning Yiddish all day” and recalled her skepticism while attending a required class on the laws of kashrut.
“IF PEOPLE WERE ALLOWED TO THINK, THEY WOULD NOT BE RELIGIOUS,” she wrote, seemingly shouting from the pages in capital letters.
Mayer concluded: “Thinking analytically when it comes to basic life decisions is something new to me and something I still struggle with, 5 years after leaving.”
Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.
