Atarah Schiff

Atarah Schiff (2017)

**Atarah Schiff** (Hebrew: **עטרה שיף**, formerly **Shlonsky**, born March 1, 1988) - is an Israeli-born American writer, fashion designer and model.

## Biography

### Early Life and Haredi Community:

Atarah Schiff was born on March 1, 1988 in Holon, Israel and moved to Kiryas Joel, New York, at the age of three. Her father, Isidore Schiff (b. 1959) worked as a teacher in yeshiva, her mother, Lilach (née Orenstein, b. 1960), was a housewife; she is the youngest of their three children and second daughter. Her older siblings are, Gittel (b. January 17, 1979) and Harel (b. March 19, 1982). She is of Ashkenazi (from Hungary and Ukraine) and Sephardi (from Spain) Jewish descent. Her first language was Yiddish, and later she also learnt Hebrew and English. She grew up in an Orthodox Jewish community. As she states, she and her sister weren't happy at all to live in that type of community. On December 2, 1995, Gittel married Omri Perlmutter (b. February 10, 1979), the son of respected Jewish family, with whom Gittel has two twin sons, Yaakov and Idan (b. August 30, 1996), which she gave birth to at the age of seventeen. Her brother, Harel, married Livna Werfel-Tannenbaum (1982-2006) of Jewish nobility, on June 18, 2000, and they had a daughter Liora (b. December 1, 2001). Livna died in 2006 in the fire. On October 6, 2009, Harel married Geula Benrubi (b. May 29, 1983), with her, he has a son Uri (b. January 20, 2011) and is also raising her son, Ophir (b. July 2, 2007). On December 16, 2005, at the age of seventeen, she married Tamir Shlonsky, five years her senior (b. February 26, 1983). They have two daughters, Shira (b. March 6, 2006) and Ziva (b. October 17, 2007). At the age of 12, she started to smuggle and hide fashion magazines. She decided to escape Orthodox Jewish community in 2013 and moved to Chicago, at the age of 25, and divorced with Shlonsky. As a main reason of her escape of community she cites, that she did not want to her daughters to have an arranged marriages and wanted them to do whatever they want.

### Career

Since she was young, she wanted to show her life to other people. She released her first book ''Escape of a Jewish Woman'' on June 19, 2015. Book became bestseller of 2015. In May 2016, she signed to model company ''Illinois Models''. She made her runway debut in July 2016 in Canada. Later she made campaigns with brands like Bijoux and Austin. In August 2016, Schiff founded a shoe company, Shiva, with the goal to make shoes that were both fashionable and comfortable. She partnered with a ski boot engineer and a French company that creates a gel to create a comfortable high-heeled shoe. Her shoes were eventually sold in 15 countries; brand's name is a merge of her daughters names. On February 1, 2017, she released her second book, ''Israeli Fashion''. Her brand has also designed wedding dresses to Kate Martinelli, Tanika and to Carmen Perret's daughter, Fleur. Her net worth is estimated to be over $450 million.

### Personal Life

She and her daughters live in Bel Air, Los Angeles and in Brooklyn, New York. Although her family firstly did not accepted her choice to escape, she keeps in touch with all the relatives still living in Haredi community. She has been dating lawyer Gary Bertoli (b. October 29, 1979), a nephew of surgeon George Bertoli, since June 2016. She gave birth to her third child and his first one, a daughter Libi Veronica, on December 6, 2019.