When Your Family Says No

Laya Martinez

Monday, November 13 • 7pm

@laya.martinez.9

@Laya_Martinez

When Your Family Says No

At 19, Laya Stein­berg fell in love and ran away with a non-Jew­ish man vio­lat­ing cen­turies of tra­di­tion and reli­gious law. In the wake of ex-com­mu­ni­ca­tion and an intense cam­paign to win her back, includ­ing pri­vate detec­tives and fam­i­ly spies, she man­aged to make a new life for her­self and her chil­dren. Laya’s sto­ry is the tale of tens of thou­sands of oth­ers, Jew­ish or oth­er­wise, who choose to lead lives in ways that do not neat­ly con­form to the expec­ta­tions of their fam­i­lies. As Laya choos­es love over reli­gious and cul­tur­al tra­di­tions, she wakes up to a new world of inde­pen­dence and free­dom, a world where she must risk every­thing she has known to become the woman she was meant to be. We are remind­ed of the beau­ti­ful, unex­pect­ed turns life takes if we are brave enough to take the helm of our own truth.

About the Author:

Laya was raised in a tra­di­tion­al Ortho­dox home and was des­tined to become a house­wife until her life took an unex­pect­ed turn. After ini­tial­ly study­ing at Yeshi­va Uni­ver­si­ty, she began work­ing dur­ing the infan­cy of com­put­ers, climb­ing the indus­try’s ranks to become one of Mas­ter­Charge’s first female pro­gram­mers. Laya went on to found two suc­cess­ful data pro­cess­ing com­pa­nies serv­ing For­tune 500 clients and was iden­ti­fied by the Philadel­phia Busi­ness Jour­nal as one of Philadel­phi­a’s Top 25 Women Busi­ness Own­ers. When not writ­ing, speak­ing, or spend­ing time with her grand­chil­dren, she trav­els exten­sive­ly through­out the world.

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