Posts Tagged ‘ women ’

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

“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…

I usually trudge along with Chasidic women to the J train every morning. Like them, I’m close to the JMZ lines. All of us walk mechanically, like robots, toward the loud, screeching subway train.

“Speaking of loud and screechy,” I…

Some people dislike women who put on tefillin and pray with their own minyan. They dislike them so much that they believe they should be pelted with chairs. The incident occurred at the Western Wall in…

First she was the Mahara”t, a “manhigah hilkhatit, rukhanit, toranit.” Then she was upgraded to a “rabbah.” But now Sara Hurwitz’s title might be in question. Hailed as the first woman to be ordained as anything close to an…

I needed a job, any job, anything to pay rent and buy a box of pasta and occasionally, chicken. They needed an office girl. Someone from Crown Heights. Why Crown Heights? Maybe they considered Lubavitch girls to be louder, more…

I followed my mother around the side of the multi-family townhouse and almost slipped on the narrow, icy steps leading to the basement shop. Steadying myself, I entered a store that was almost certainly “off the books”. Racks of robes…

I have to be at work early today. Niko has to load his truck at eight and Mr. V. won’t trust a goy with the keys. Sometimes I wish he wouldn’t trust me either. It would make my life easier.…

As a teenager I read an article in Cosmo about how guys with stubble like the red they can bring to a woman’s cheeks during kissing: It’s a she’s-so-tender-I’m-so-tough type of thing. The first time I saw a Chasid, his beard looked vaguely terrifying. I’ve always hated beards, macho like my Dad’s, like Hulk...
Read more »