Author Archive

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…

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…

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…

We all love sex. We like it in the darkness of night when all we can hear are the strange house noises from electrical appliances, during broad daylight with the sounds of bustling crowds around us, or as the birds begin to chirp in the wee small hours of dawn. We like to vary...
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In June of 2003, I met with a writer for The Village Voice in a kosher café in Midtown Manhattan. Over a diet coke, with the writer’s recorder on the table between us, I spoke about my blog, my views on religion, and Chasidic society. I’d been hesitant, apprehensive about the inevitable publicity following...
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Diary of an unpious editor

– I’m not looking to publish on blogs, he says.

– It’s not a blog, I say, it’s an online journal.

– Whatever, he says. It’s not the…

Get your ballots out because the voting is soon to begin! We received many great entries. And to borrow the contemporary feel-good slogan: All are winners. But it isn’t just a slogan. The…

When I was a toddler, even before my mother started curling my little payess around her finger and brushing it with a bit of sugar-water, she taught me the English alphabet (after I had mastered the Alef Beis, of course). By the time I was enrolled in pre-school I knew that c-a-t spells cat....
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He reminded me of myself, back when I’d never been inside a bar, hardly even to a restaurant. It was a spontaneous meetup. He’d been a fan for years, and we corresponded…

“Hey, H.! Remember the Tenth of Teves?” N. called to me jovially. He was unpacking a crate of Tuv Ta’am products, babaganoushes, tomato dips, tuna and potato salads, and large containers of sour pickles.…