Background and career
Julia Haart (born April 11, 1971), previously known as Yulia Leibov, Julia Leibov, Talia Leibov, and Talia Hendler, is an American fashion designer, entrepreneur, and author. She is the founder of Body by Julia, a body-positive, technologically advanced shapewear brand. Haart is the co-owner of Freedom Holding (formerly Pacific Global Management Group), a holding company that controls the Elite World Group. She previously owned a namesake shoe collection, and was creative director at the Italian luxury house La Perla. Haart is the subject and executive producer of the Netflix miniseries My Unorthodox Life, which described her 2013 decision to leave her Haredi community. Haart serves on the Emerge America Creative Coalition, the ERA Coalition Advisory Board and the Association for Foreign Press Correspondents USA Board of Directors.
Haart was born in Moscow in 1971. She and her parents left Russia when she was 3, and moved to Austin, United States. In Austin, she attended the Wilford School, at which she was the private school's only Jewish student. Her parents gradually became more observant, under the tutelage of a Chabad rabbi. Eventually, her parents decided to move to an area with a large Haredi community. When Haart was in fourth grade, her family moved to Monsey, United States. Initially, Haart attended the Adolph Schreiber Hebrew Academy of Rockland, a Modern Orthodox day school in New City, United States. But Haart and her family's level of observance had been considerably higher than that of Haart's peers. Haart's parents decided to send her to a Haredi school with stricter observance. In the seventh grade, Haart transferred to Yeshiva of Spring Valley, a Bais Yaakov school in Monsey, United States. Haart completed high school studies at Bais Yaakov Monsey in Monsey, New York, at which she served as a student leader. After graduation, Haart attended seminary for one year at Beth Jacob Jerusalem. There, Haart earned a teaching certificate, which qualified her to teach both secular and religious subjects in Orthodox Jewish schools within the Haredi community. Haart began her teaching career immediately upon graduation from the seminary.
In the Haredi girls' schools, the primary focus had been on teaching religious observance, as well as on preparing to be godly wives and mothers. Haart had hoped to marry a rabbi, then to raise an observant family. During her school years, Haart had been called Julia, the Anglicized form of her Russian name Yulia. When she was 18, she changed her first name, "to the more Hebrew-sounding Talia, in order to attract a match". Haart's family began searching for a suitable match, with the help of a shadchan, upon Haart's graduation from seminary. At 19, Haart married her first husband, Yosef Hendler, a yeshiva student who was five years her senior. Yosef was himself a ba'al teshuva, who became religious while studying at the Wharton School in United States. At the time of their marriage, Hendler had been a kollel student at Yeshiva Rabbi Chaim Berlin. The two began their married life together in Brooklyn; thereafter, the family moved to Monsey. Financial constraints necessitated that Yosef leave the kollel and work in the secular world. Yosef started working as a trading assistant at Lehman Brothers in New York City. Then Yosef took a job at Southern Energy, due to which the Hendler family moved to Atlanta. Some years later, the Hendlers moved to Monsey. The Hendler children were sent to Haredi schools in the Monsey area.
After graduating from the seminary, Haart taught English and/or Judaic Studies at several Orthodox Jewish schools: Yeshiva Atlanta in Atlanta; Yeshivat Shaare Torah in Brooklyn; Bnos Leah Prospect Park Yeshiva in Brooklyn; Yeshiva of Spring Valley in Monsey; the Adolph Schreiber Hebrew Academy of Rockland in New City; and Bais Rochel in Monsey. Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, Haart worked as a Judaic Studies teacher at Yeshiva Atlanta; "staff who knew her at the time – when she went by the name Talia Hendler – recalled that she was beloved by students and known for her sharp style".
Right from the start, there was friction in the Hendlers' marriage. While living as a Haredi Jew throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, Haart became increasingly uncomfortable with her community. The treatment of her younger daughter, Miriam, bothered her in particular. In a 2021 interview with The New York Times, she said that her daughter "just wouldn't conform. They were doing to her what they had done to me — trying to push her down and mold her into that flat person that they could disappear. I couldn't let that happen." After leaving the community, she took on the name Julia Haart. The last name Haart is derived from her maiden name, Leibov, which is similar to Lev, Hebrew for "heart". Thereafter, Haart entered the fashion industry, with the help of investors and business partners.
For years, Haart secretly sold life insurance. The money from these secret sales provided for her the means with which to leave the Haredi community, and to establish a new life for herself in the secular world.
