At the end of World War II, there were only a few thousand ultra-Orthodox Jews in the United States, mostly living in New York City. Seventy years later, the numbers have grown to around two hundred thousand in New York alone. Most of the expansion came from natural growth and large families. Emerging at the same time was a community of mostly young men and women who decided to leave ultra-Orthodoxy. Withdrawing from any strict religious community is not simple: it requires a dramatic change in lifestyle and, as a result, one might find oneself cut off from family and friends.“Off the Derech” (OTD) means off the righteous path. This term describes those who have departed the fold of ultra-Orthodox Judaism. With the rise of OTDs, public awareness has also grown. Several academic monographs describe this community and some members have written memoirs that became best sellers. The hit Netflix show Unorthodox also tells the story of religious disaffiliation of a young Hasidic woman. Off the Derech, edited by Ezra Cappell and Jessica Lang, adds to the growing body of work and presents personal narratives along with analyses by activists and scholars.Although published by State University of New York Press, the volume mostly tells the story from the perspective of activists rather than scholars. By doing so, it ignores the wide literature on deconversion, religious disaffiliation, and religious switching. On the one hand, we get a very clear picture of the complexities of pulling out of a strict religion like ultra-Orthodox Judaism and the toll it takes on those who decide to depart from that world. It presents personal stories that are heartbreaking. At times, this book is reminiscent of Leah Remini’s hit show Scientology and the Aftermath, which tells the personal stories of ex-Scientologists. On the other hand, I would expect a book from a distinguished university press to focus less on personal narratives and anticult activists similar to Remini, and devote its attention to the bigger picture that ties this phenomenon to larger sociological, historical, and comparative aspects. In this regard, the book is disappointing.The ultra-Orthodox world is extremely communal and demands total loyalty. The most intimate relations between husband and wife are highly supervised and regulated, and the supreme demand for any young couple is to have as many children as possible. Jessica Lang’s analysis of memoirs by some female OTDs shows how their discovery of the world outside of the enclave prompted them to push against the boundaries in which they lived. Leaving the community is essentially a declaration of independence that, at its core, centers on individualism and personal choice.Sociologist Lynn Davidman studied the exit narratives of ultra-Orthodox Jews and compared them with those people who departed fundamentalist Christianity. In her chapter in the volume, she correctly notes that Christian defection narratives tell of struggles with belief. In contrast, the exit stories of ultra-Orthodox Jews highlight the abandonment of praxis: forsaking the many rituals that structure their lives. Davidman’s research offers a correction to general sociological theories that concentrate on loss of faith as the major element of deconversion.Ultra-Orthodox communities in Israel and the United States put up major barriers for those who consider defection. One obstacle is the schooling system, which offers very limited secular studies. This makes ultra-Orthodox men and women noncompetitive in the job market, since they lack high school diplomas or professional training. In his chapter, Moshe Shenfeld, co-founder of Out for Change, discusses this organization based in Israel that addresses the situation by lobbying the state to offer OTDs a bridging option to their educational gaps, among other things. Another obstacle might be physical distance. Gabi Abramac’s chapter examines a small group of Shababnikim—ultra-Orthodox dropouts in Israel, who now live between the secular and the Haredi worlds. A group of them is currently living in New York. Abramac’s anthropological study reveals that although they do not look or live like ultra-Orthodox Jews, they still consider themselves part of this community. The great distance between the Shababnikim and their families in Israel actually has brought them closer together, thus telling a different story from others in this volume.Rachel Berger, Tsivia Finman, and Lani Santo are past and present employees of the Footsteps organization based in New York City. Their chapter describes the range of services to OTDs the organization provides, including social and emotional support, educational and career guidance, financial help, workshops, and legal representation for divorce and custody battles. According to Footsteps, secular courts favor the ultra-Orthodox in custody battles. Time and again secular courts discriminate against parents who have left the ultra-Orthodox community. In other jurisdictions there has been a tendency to remove children from “cults,” but that is not the case here. This just speaks to the power of ultra-Orthodoxy in some communities. Footsteps is lobbying for a systemic change and working to mobilize public opinion against this discrimination.Off the Derech tells an important story of a growing community of disaffiliated members who are living on the margins of their previous worlds and are building new spaces for themselves with new identities. Readers of Nova Religio will benefit from the essays in this volume, especially if we compare OTDs with cases of religious defection from other alternative religious movements. I hope that in the future, such comparative research will take place.