Archive for June, 2010

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. This Yossele was a little boy…

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 are so fucking cool. Those curls…

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.

This weekend I read a book called Fiedler on the Roof, a collection of essays about literature and Jewish identity by Leslie Fiedler. I received this book from a cyber-friend who, unaware that Ruchy Fiedler is a pseudonym, imagined…

“My name is Baila Rothman, I’m from Ohio, I’m sixteen, I’m new here,” I said to each of my roommates when they wandered in to the dorm that night. Deborah Lee had the bed to my right. She was…

Tzomo Lecha Nafshi,

Put away the book. Put it away and listen to Kiddush. Stand up, your father’s waiting. Shhh. Come on.  Nu. Nu!  We don’t talk before grape juice, you’re a big girl already. Kinderlach, let’s wash…

Rievi and I sit on rocks near the shallow stream, the water cascading over tangles of rocks, branches, and fallen tree trunks, seeking its way, as water always does, to the lowest point. We eat the food we…

He felt the vibration on his waist. He removed the phone from its holster and glanced at the caller-ID screen. The number was unfamiliar, and so was the voice. But what it said send a shudder rippling down his…