Jewish scholar Todros Grynhaus abused Yehudis Fletcher when she was a teenager living under his roof in Prestwich. In her new memoir Chutzpah, she explores her faith, sexuality, and her decision to stay in the Orthodox Jewish community(Image: Yehudis Fletcher)

Yehudis Fletcher’s relationship with Manchester has been far from straightforward. As a child, she says she always felt ‘comfortable’ in the city, joining her grandmother on day trips into town and to the Jewish Museum.

But the city didn’t become home for her until she was a teenager. Born in Glasgow, she was sent to live in Prestwich in 2003 by her parents after struggling to adjust to a family move to Israel. She was aged just 15. There, she moved into the home of a Jewish scholar – Todros Grynhaus – at the heart of the city’s Orthodox Jewish, or charedi, community.

In a vile abuse of power, Grynhaus sexually assaulted Yehudis repeatedly, stealing into her bedroom at night and forcing himself upon her. Young and shielded from sexual ideas and language through her religion, she didn’t even have the words to describe what was happening to her. When she did try to speak within her community, she was silenced.

Today, Grynhaus is a convicted paedophile – in no small part thanks to Yehudis’ evidence as a witness at his trial in 2015. But finding justice through Manchester’s courts has been just one part of her story of self-discovery and living life on her own terms, as a charedi Jewish lesbian.

Sitting down at her dining table at her family home in Prestwich, where she has chosen to return, Yehudis says she has had friends and colleagues she hasn’t had contact with for a long time get in touch with her ahead of the publication of her memoir Chutzpah, which was released on Thursday (May 22). The book, a powerful and compelling tale of a woman pushing to understand her faith and herself, is also a call from Yehudis for a more evolved and tolerant society.

A picture of Yehudis sent to her first husband for approval(Image: Yehudis Fletcher)

“I had one old friend reach out to me, somebody who I hadn’t spoken to for years,” the 37-year-old said, warming her hands on a cup of herbal tea. “She told me her memories of me were of ‘sunny anarchism’.”

It’s a phrase that suits Yehudis perfectly. As we talk, it’s difficult not to notice the joy in the home around her – the handwritten birthday cards from her children, the rainbow poster on the wall behind her, the warmth of her living room with the familiar clutter of everyday family life. She knows she has made change – real, tangible change, to Manchester’s communities. But she also knows we can always strive for more.

Of course, much of Chutzpah is far from joyful. The early pages cover her childhood in Glasgow and Israel, a period where her desperate hunger for understanding the world around her often put her at odds with the religious and cultural expectations she faced.

The memoir does not shy away from the difficult. Yehudis writes about Grynhaus’ abuse in stark and unrelenting terms, evoking sympathy and anger in equal measure. Even decades later, her memories of his words, his excuses, his acts, are sickening. But the book makes it clear that it is far from the end of her story.

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In fact, it is the ten years between Grynhaus’ conviction and the present day that show the starkest moments of self-development in the book. Questioning her religion and the institutions that failed to protect her was never about a loss of faith, and if anything, Yehudis says she hopes Chutzpah shows readers they can be ‘more than one thing at the same time’.

“I really hope that somebody who reads the book understands that wherever they come from, whether they’re Jewish, whether they are Mancunian, that they shouldn’t have to always choose between two different things,” she told the M.E.N.

“Quite often they can do more than they think that they can. People should believe in themselves having more capacity than they thought they had themselves, and also to hope for society to be capable of more.

“I think sometimes people, we could be quite pessimistic. What I want people to take away after reading this book is saying we can expand and we can do things and we can grow.”

She has also been forced to confront the fact that not everyone in the charedi community supports her decisions – both personal and professional. The book goes into the intensely painful reactions from some family members and friends over her decision to speak out about Grynhaus and about her sexuality. But ultimately, Yehudis says, it is not for anyone else to tell her whether she is charedi or not: “I never left, and you can’t throw someone out of their own heritage,” she explained.

Still, she knows Chutzpah will not be warmly received by some. “I don’t think I have always been welcomed here, particularly by people in the charedi community,” she said.

“Loads of people have told me that they’ve ordered it and there’s lots of people excited to read it. But I’m also sure people will refuse to read it and I am sure people will be very curious about reading it but will kind of form their own response to it without necessarily having read it because they might refuse to it on principle.”

Now pursuing a Masters degree and working in advocacy and policy, Yehudis speaks about being able to make change through your own circle of influence – much of hers within Manchester. It is a city she has become intricately connected with, first through family, then through abuse, and now also through her own work in policy. She said writing Chutzpah allowed her to reflect on her relationship with the city as somewhere she has ‘committed herself’.

“Before writing Chutzpah I’d always seen myself as Glaswegian,” she admitted. “But I think it is clear now how much the struggle to stay is a struggle to stay right here in Manchester.

“My story is deeply connected to Manchester as a place and so many different parts of its institutions, from the Jewish part of the community, to the courts, to GMCA.

“I’ve committed myself to the Manchester community as the people, but also I’m part of Manchester as a place.”

Chutzpah is out now from Penguin Books.