Published: 24 January 2020
Last updated: 5 March 2024
SO, HARRY AND MEGHAN are Off the Derech, or “Off the path”, as Orthodox people sometimes call members of their community who are “on the way out”.
The comparison seems flippant at first. After all, the pressures faced by Harry Windsor, sixth-in-line to the British throne, seem difficult to relate to.
Trapped in an archaic arrangement in which his destiny was determined from birth, answering to his older brother, father and grandmother, his every movement watched and judged by the entire nation, and unable to escape the weight of their expectations except by taking extreme measures — he is hardly an everyman.
Yet his story will feel familiar to many Jews.
Take the strictly Orthodox community. How many of their sons and daughters are similarly born into a life whose course has been largely prescribed for them, from the type of person they are to marry, the kind of work they are allowed to do — if at all — and the clothes they can wear?
FULL STORY Lessons we can learn from Harry and Meghan (Jewish Chronicle)
Photo: Henry Nicholls (Reuters)
