Hasidic Judaism, Game Theory, and the Case for an Unpowerful God

It seems like many OTD-ers – actually, Jews in general – look at God as an all-or-nothing proposition: either He is this terrible, fearful, angry guy who’s always threatening you, or He doesn’t exist. But there are other possibilities.

Hasidic historiography, inter-sectarian violence, the struggle against Breslov, and the case of Yitzchak Nachum Twerski.

Ne'echaz Basvach
By David Assaf
Mercaz Zalman Shazar

His hands are wrapped around me, my breasts up against his chest. He steps, his hips nudging my hips forward and back and suddenly to the side, the crying guitar sends his hands…

Children laughing, a baby’s muffled cry, the peaceful sounds of a Saturday afternoon, drift through the open window. This is New York – one of the liveliest, most turbulent cities in the world…

The room is quiet. I bubble in an answer on my sheet from the booklet of the SAT Reasoning Test. The test administrator stands next to the chalkboard, a young woman in her…

Itchie has a dolly.
He calls her Dolly.
Itchie loves his Dolly.
He plays with her all the time. He also has a friend.
His friend is the…

I had four children when I managed to leap off the train mid-journey to Doomsville. Sweet innocent children that I love dearly, but I had to leave them. It was too dangerous for…

It used to be, you could trace my crazy years with your finger, from the melted skin on my right wrist across to the map of scars and burns and scrapes that dotted…

Yoshke sat in the swivel chair in his office, and stared at his computer screen. He was thinking about this week’s hotline recording, and he did his best thinking while looking at his…

Let me tell you a little about Yossele. No, no, not the famous one who could sing a mile and even the opera-goyim wanted him to perform for them.…

Several year ago, still sporting payess and a more-or-less Chasidic appearance, I met a girl in Greenwich village who stopped me on McDougal Street to tell me, “I think Hasidic Jews…

Do ex-Hasidim serve themselves well by establishing a vibrant community? Or does such community only amplify the narrative of struggle and displacement, inevitably confining them to the fringes?

Samuel Katz, a student at Stony Brook University, examines some of the ex-Hasidic community's unintended consequences.