I am the daughter of an Orthodox rabbi, the granddaughter of a Chief Rabbi of Israel. This religious world is familiar to me. I already know that only an animal that chews the cud and has cloven hoofs is kosher and that’s why pork is forbidden. I know Jews can only eat fish that have both fins and scales. I know how to read Hebrew and recite the prayers by heart. Yet I am also learning that there is far more to this world than I was aware of. I certainly never imagined the intensity of the spiritual pursuit of holiness or the extent to which keeping one’s minds on the godly requires shunning modern thought and culture. I always thought that my father’s approach of straddling both the secular and religious worlds and integrating contemporary concepts with ancient customs was the Jewish way. But here at the yeshiva this kind of synthesis is frowned upon, as the ultra-Orthodox believe any outside influences will contaminate their carefully circumscribed and protected world.

Even though most of the girls studying here have a past, I would not want them to know about the memories of Chris that are flooding my mind. I have never told them that I had a non-Jewish boyfriend or that he was someone I met at the backstage bar of the Hammersmith Odeon when he was taking photos for Melody Maker magazine and I was tagging along with a groupie who had backstage passes. And I would certainly never let on that he picked me up that night and cut crystal lines of cocaine on a mirror and offered them to me and that I sniffed one up each nostril and pulled him off the bar stool and led him to the ladies’ toilet, where he entered me from behind. I shudder at the memory and breathe a sigh of relief that I have found this cocoon of purity in which to let go of the past.