Opening his wardrobe, Twersky takes out a white shirt and a pair of black trousers, the uniform of Hasidic men. Inside hangs his bekishe, a long silk coat, and on the top shelf is a large round hatbox containing his shtreimel, the fur hat costing up to $5000 (£3100) which married Hasidic men wear on special occasions and the Sabbath.

Twersky, who is 23, wore these at his wedding in 2005 but rarely has the opportunity to put them on nowadays. “You aren’t forced to get married but we are so brainwashed we think it’s what we want,” he says. “It’s like a cult. When I had my kids I started brainwashing them from six months old. It was all God, God, God. Their minds are so fresh, they absorb everything.”

Today the aspiring actor, who lives in New York, home to the largest Hasidic community in the world, has more mundane matters on his mind, like the pile of unpaid bills on the table of the single room in Manhattan where he lives, the endless phone calls from debt collectors and the fact that in a few days he will be homeless again.

After years of doubts, Twersky left his community in 2008 and became one of a growing number of so-called Hasidic rebels in New York. His decision lost him his job and saw him cast out by family and friends, leaving him to fend for himself in one of the most expensive, overcrowded cities on Earth.

The Hasidic movement originated in eastern Europe in the 18th century, with large numbers arriving in the United States after the Holocaust. Wherever they went, Hasidic Jews recreated the insular, tight-knit communities they had left behind, largely functioning separately from the outside world.

Today there are about 250,000 Hasidic Jews globally. Nearly 80% of them live in the US, with half residing in New York, mostly in the Brooklyn neighbourhoods of Williamsburg, Borough Park and Crown Heights. Other large communities exist in Los Angeles, Montreal, London, Antwerp and Jerusalem.

The insular nature of the Hasidic community means statistics are hard to come by, but anecdotal evidence suggests more young people are turning their backs on the faith than ever. Despite this, the global Hasidic community is growing, as Hasidic couples typically have large families.

Life for Hasidic Jews is bound by more than 600 strict rules which forbid followers from doing all manner of things people in the secular world take for granted. These include using the internet, watching television and films, listening to music, reading newspapers and non-religious books, wearing T-shirts, eating non-kosher foods and taking part in sport. They also dictate how to tie your shoelaces and button your shirt.

Twersky left the movement because he could no longer tolerate such customs. “For me the decision to leave was about freedom,” he says, “freedom to be myself and not be held back by religion. This is the land of opportunity and yet we are living here without being exposed to any opportunities. It’s cruel.

“The problems started shortly after I got married. I felt like I had no freedom and I started violating the major laws, like not 
praying and smoking on the holy day and using the computer. Even as a young kid I was curious. I would ask, ‘How do we know there is a god?’, ‘Where is the evidence?’ and ‘Why are there all these crazy laws?’ All these questions built up until eventually they crashed.”

Twersky’s ex-wife is remarrying and has asked him to stay away from her. At her request his two sons, aged two and three, no longer call him Dad. He has no contact with any of them.

“It f—s me up,” he says, shaking his head. “When you leave you feel tormented. It goes against everything you have been taught from birth. That torment is why some people who leave get into drink and drugs or go nuts.”

Twersky grew up in Monsey, a Hasidic Jewish community in upstate New York, one of 12 children. His father is a rebbe -- the spiritual leader of a Hasidic group -- with his own synagogue, and Twersky was expected to follow in his footsteps. His decision to leave brought shame on the family, who cut him off. “Before I left I had a wife, kids, a house, a job, money, friends and family. I had everything. Today I have nothing. I’ve lost 20lbs. I can’t afford to eat.”

Twersky is $25,000 (£15,500) in debt. Taped on the back of his door is a list of telephone numbers belonging to the debt collection agencies who call him up to 40 times a day. Debts are common among those who leave: growing up in a world where the community takes care of everything, from providing newly-weds with a home to finding its members jobs, few Hasidic youngsters have been exposed to the everyday realities of the secular cash economy.

Since leaving his comfortable family home, Twersky has been living at the 92Y, a Jewish cultural and accommodation centre in Upper West Side, Manhattan. He found his room through Footsteps, a New York charity which provides Hasidic Jews who have left their community with emergency housing, emotional support and practical help. The charity has limited resources, though, and with his six-month period of free accommodation coming to an end next week, Twersky is far from bullish about his prospects.

“I have no education,” he says. “I have no high-school diploma. We just study Judaic studies in our schools. I have no special skills and there is a recession on. I was sent a film script recently and it mentioned John Lennon. I didn’t know who John Lennon was and I’m a 23-year-old guy who grew up in New York.”

Twersky checks his Facebook account, grabs his wallet and his BlackBerry, and heads outside to smoke a cigarette. His BlackBerry is his connection to the non-Hasidic world and he says he’d sooner starve than do without it. He heads to the subway to travel to his part-time job at a hospital where he translates between Yiddish and English. Ironically, although he has turned his back on his community, he still needs his Hasidic identity to get work: he has had a couple of acting jobs playing Hasidic roles, and has worked as a Hasidic consultant on a film. “I better land a big job soon,” he says. “Life is tough every single day. So far this life is not working for me.”

 

Footsteps was founded in 2003 by a Hasidic Jew. The Greenwich Village-based charity, which is funded through donations, employs social workers and has a drop-in centre where visitors can enjoy secular pleasures like watching TV. After a lifetime of being prohibited from using the internet, today there is a thriving online community of Hasidic rebel blogs and chat rooms, where like-minded souls can connect with one another and find out about social gatherings.

“The decision to leave is painful,” says Paula Winnig, executive director of the charity. “A lot of people in their community think they’ve left because they want to experiment with drink, drugs or sex, but that is not the case. Typically, cataclysmic events have led them to go.”

Currently 200 people receive help through Footsteps, and new calls come daily. “We hold sessions on everything from hairstyles to learning to budget, getting vocational skills and interacting with the opposite sex,” says Winnig. “They are raised completely separately from the opposite sex and, not surprisingly, many of them have skewed views about sexuality. Most have been raised with Yiddish as their first language, Hebrew second and English third, so they speak funny. They have major problems with written English. They don’t have the skills they need to survive in the outside world. I watch as guys in their thirties learn their times-tables. It’s hard to admit at that age that you don’t know five times nine.”

Footsteps helps participants adjust to life in the secular world without the structure and rules of their past. “This isn’t like other religions where religion is one part of their lives,” says Winnig. “As a Hasidic Jew, religion is your whole life. It affects everything.”

 

Aweek later, Luzer Twersky takes the subway to Manhattan’s Garment District, where generations of Jews and other immigrants worked to carve out a living in the new world. It is after 10.30pm when he arrives at a dilapidated three-storey synagogue. Twersky is here for the cholent, a weekly social gathering which takes its name from the kosher stew served on the Sabbath. Though most people who come were raised Hasidic, the cholent -- organised by an observant Hasidic Jew -- also attracts hipsters, drifters, pavement philosophers and the occasional homeless person.

The synagogue was opened in 1948 by a congregation of dressmakers and hatters. It still functions as a house of worship but has seen better days. Paint peels from the walls.

As you walk up several flights of stairs, the voices grow louder. People stand around in groups of two, three and four. Some sit on mismatched furniture. A steaming bowl of cholent sits in the corner of the room. In nooks and crannies throughout the building, people are debating everything from religion and psychology to feminism and philosophy. Pinned on a wall is an unpaid electricity bill for $1500.

Outside on the balcony, among the small huddle of smokers, is Jacob Berger. Like many here tonight, Berger straddles two worlds. His parents and his two children do not know he spends much of his spare time in Manhattan, where, despite his traditional Hasidic dress, he visits bars and cafes, and hangs out with Hasidic rebels and non-Jews. He still lives with his wife in a Hasidic community in Brooklyn, and while she can see he no longer observes all the rules, she chooses to ignore his lapses such as watching movies at home and using pornography. He has recently started meeting women through the popular listings website Craigslist for sex.

“I am living a lie but I would be giving up everything, including my sons, if I left the community,” says Berger. “That is not a decision I am going to take lightly. At the moment I am weighing things up and talking to people who have left to see what I can learn from them.”

It was 15 years ago that Isaac Schonfeld, the patriarch behind the cholent, began hosting social gatherings at his home and offices. When the events grew too big, Schonfeld moved them into the synagogue. He is an observant Hasidic Jew who feels comfortable hosting a discussion at the cholent on cannabis and the Torah, and who talks freely to people of both sexes and all religious and secular backgrounds. “I wanted to create a place where my friends and those on the periphery of society could come and feel accepted for being themselves,” he says.

Gem (not her real name) lives as an observant Hasidic Jew but is trying to amass enough money and courage to leave. She thinks she might like to go to university one day but first needs to work out where her interests lie. “We are taught not to have opinions or to be individuals,” she says, “so it is hard to start working out who you are, what you think and what your likes and dislikes are.”

New waves of people come and go over the course of the night and into the early hours of the morning. They include Aaron, who first came here with his peyos and beard five years ago, and today, clean-shaven, works as a teacher in China. He is back in New York for a holiday and has dropped in to say hello to the friends who helped him to embark on his new life.

A man arrives carrying a guitar. A group begins singing Yiddish songs and dancing. It is after 2am when one young man, dressed in the traditional Hasidic long black coat and broad-rimmed hat, begins leading prayers. Everyone joins in or leaves the room. When asked why some people who are no longer observant join in the prayers, Schonfeld says, “People take comfort from what they grew up with.”

 

Schonfeld was born and still lives in Borough Park, which is almost exclusively Hasidic. Aged 46 and unmarried (a stigma in the eyes of the Hasidic community), he lives in his childhood home with his mother, brother, sister-in-law and their seven children.

Borough Park stretches 22 blocks by 12 blocks, and is home to roughly 300 synagogues and four non-Jewish places of worship. Several blocks away from Schonfeld’s house is a Hebrew bookshop and a maternity and baby goods shop. “There are lots of those here,” says Schonfeld, smiling.

Everywhere you look in Borough Park, and the neighbouring Hasidic communities of Crown Heights and Williamsburg, there are women with pushchairs. Despite the 32˚C heat the women are dressed modestly in dark-coloured long skirts and long-sleeved tops. They wear wigs and headscarves. Schonfeld points to a vacant shop. It was a women’s clothes shop, he says, but the stock was considered too showy by the locals who boycotted it, promptly driving the owner out of business.

It is customary for Hasidic couples to marry when they are teenagers and begin having children straight away. Women are not expected to work. US government statistics show that with so many children to feed and one, or sometimes no, parent in work, a dis-proportionate percentage of Hasidic families live below the poverty line.

Outside a large supermarket, Hasidic workers are loading up crates with kosher tinned foods and toilet rolls. A few doors along is a mikvah, the ritual bath used for purification; on the opposite side is a school for girls, hidden behind 20ft-high screens. “There are girls swimming in a pool behind the screen,” explains Schonfeld. Modesty dictates that they should not be seen by the eyes of passing men. The rules also prohibit men from hearing females sing or seeing them dance, which means fathers cannot attend their daughters’ school shows.

Schonfeld points out signs advertising help for the poor and needy. “No-one goes hungry. The community looks after everyone.”

Though we have dressed modestly, the presence of a journalist and a photographer is clearly unwelcome here. When they notice us, people turn suddenly and start walking in the opposite direction or cross the street. Children stare.

A notice taped in a shop window appeals for someone to donate a kidney to a member of the community who needs a transplant: “Save our Tatty’s life. Father of 11 desperately needs a kidney.” Other posters warn residents of the dangers of using the internet; one claims it causes cancer.

Ahead of us, a couple walk along the street in their best clothes. “They have just got married,” explains Schonfeld. In accordance with Jewish laws which forbid public displays of affection, the man and woman do not hold hands. They could be mistaken for brother and sister.

How does Schonfeld square his willingness to break some of the rules with his religion? “It is a daily challenge,” he says. What would he say to people like Luzer Twersky who complain that their lack of a secular education makes it impossible for them to survive in the outside world? “The community is like an organism that wants to protect itself,” he says. “Why should it prepare kids in a way that makes it possible for them to leave the community when it doesn’t want them to leave?”

 

Until two years ago, Melissa Weisz was known by her Hasidic name, Malky, from the Hebrew for “queen”. The psychology graduate and model, who is 25, sits in a cafe in trendy East Village, Manhattan, a half-hour subway ride from Borough Park where she grew up. Dressed in jeans and a pretty sleeveless shirt, Weisz looks like any other fashion-conscious New York woman, but her outfit would be regarded as deeply immodest by Hasidic standards.

“As a Hasidic female, you can’t wear trousers and your skirt has to be four inches below your knee and above your ankle,” she says. “Your top must cover your collarbone and should not be fitted. Your sleeves have to cover your elbows, even if you lift your arm. And you should wear dark colours.”

Hasidic Jews also frown upon such basic characteristics as good posture, according to Weisz. “You are not meant to draw attention to yourself,” she says. “I am tall and didn’t hunch. It was considered immoral. There is a walk Hasidic women have -- you see it wherever you go in Hasidic communities. They hunch and scurry about like ants, not making eye contact.”

After marriage, women in Hasidic communities shave their heads and wear wigs. Weisz began growing her hair when she left the community. Today it spills over her shoulders and down her back.

“I was seven or eight years old when I first felt different,” she recalls. “In school I always asked questions which got me into a lot of trouble. The teachers told my friends to stay away from me because I was a bad influence. Because I was female I was expected to 
serve my brothers. I always felt it was unfair that as a female I was treated like a second-class citizen.

“We grew up with lots of fear and guilt. We are taught to be afraid of everything -- our neighbours, dogs, non-Jewish people, going on the train. Growing up, I never knew any boys besides my brothers and cousins.”

Weisz was 19 when her mother told her the shadchan, or community matchmaker, had found her a husband. Weisz was furious but gave in to family pressure and was married three-and-a-half months later.

She spent the next few years struggling with her religion, speaking to Hasidic leaders about her doubts, reading books and trying to make sense of her life within the community. Finally, aged 24, she felt she could no longer cope with the pretence and realised she did not believe in the core beliefs of Hasidism. “I was under pressure to have children and I couldn’t bear the idea of raising them with warped values, values I didn’t believe in any more,” she says.

Weisz and her Hasidic husband got divorced by a rabbi in 2007. Today she is trying to rebuild her relationship with her family. She is trying to help her parents understand her new life and her reasons for leaving the old one behind. “I see my niece and she asks me questions about the secular world. Recently she said, ‘Mom said you were always smart and a deep thinker and pretty, and that was the problem.’”

Hers is a cautionary tale among local Hasidic Jews, says Weisz, and her mother tells her she can’t be happy without God in her life. Hasidic men assume she is sexually available because she left the community, a common story for young women in her position, who speak of receiving phone calls from Hasidic men asking for sex.

Weisz is better equipped than most for life on the outside: she persuaded her parents to let her get a secular education and, unusually, spoke English at home. She enjoys modelling but hopes one day to become a forensic psychologist.

Last year she went to a club for the first time. “It was terrifying, really disorienting, the noise, the lights, all the people,” she says. “I don’t know if a guy is hitting on me or if he’s just being friendly.” She has also been trying non-kosher foods to find out what she likes.

Though she would never try to turn anyone against religion, Weisz has no time for it. “Religion is the root of all evil,” she says. “It inhibits personal growth. I’m not angry about the way I was raised. I had a loving childhood. My parents believe in what they taught me. It makes some people happy. It just isn’t for me.”

 

A week later Luzer Twersky calls. He sounds excited. “I got a part in a new film playing a Hasidic storekeeper,” he says. It’s Twersky’s first big role, but since it’s a student film there’s no money in it. For the past week he has been sleeping in his car. “I’m doing okay,” he insists. “I have a duffel bag with all the essentials -- a couple of sets of clothes, contact lens solution and deodorant. And my BlackBerry. I still have my BlackBerry.”

In the last two years Twersky has discovered a freedom he never knew before, but it has come at a price, taking him from a comfortable family home to the back seat of a car. Would he ever consider going back?

“I never say never.”