Weinstein had left the ultra-Orthodox, or Haredi, world seven years ago, but the community was up in arms when she disappeared last week, not only because she came from a very well-known, prestigious family but because her story is rattling social skeletons in the closets of Gur, the country’s largest Hasidic sect, as well as in other closets.

Indeed, among those hit hard by Weinstein’s saga are individuals who have also left the Haredi fold and are shaken periodically when one of their group takes his or her own life – in many cases, because being cut off from their families, including their own offspring, is just too hard to bear. […]

[B]y apparently taking her own life, Weinstein chose to put an issue on the table that affects thousands of families, often in a painful way: the “regulations” of the Gur Hasidim, which are enforced by “counselors” whose aim is to impose strict supervision over relationships between couples, including their intimate sexual ties, particularly during the first years of marriage.