Shulem Deen is a former Skverer Hasid, and the author of “All Who Go Do Not Return” a memoir about growing up in and then leaving the Hasidic Jewish world. His work has appeared in the New Republic, Salon, Haaretz, Tablet, and elsewhere. He serves as a board member at Footsteps, a New York City-based organization that offers assistance and support to those who
have left the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community. He lives in Brooklyn.
Shulem Deen
By Shulem Deen
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Culture How Hasidism Still Manages To Thrive
Hasidism: A New History By David Biale & 7 co-authors Princeton UniversityPress, 896 pages, $45.00 In 1770, a young man of 18, later to be known as Solomon Maimon, traveled from Nesvizh in Lithuania to the court of Dov Ber, the foremost leader of the budding Hasidic movement, in the Polish town of Mezerich. As…
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Culture Liberal New York Jews Must Engage With Orthodox — History Proves It
JEWISH NEW YORK: THE REMARKABLE HISTORY OF A CITY AND A PEOPLE By Deborah Dash Moore NYU Press, 512 Pages, $30 You see it everywhere now: anxiety about America’s Jewish future. Panel discussions and synagogue sermons and angsty op-eds, alarmed missives with a touch of bewilderment, all wondering about the right way forward. We’re intermarrying,…
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Culture Can You Leave The Orthodox And Remain Culturally Hasidic?
Who Will Lead Us? The Story of Five Hasidic Dynasties in America By Samuel Heilman University of California Press, 336 pages, $26.95 A friend of mine, the blogger once known as “Shtreimel,” author of the popular (but now-defunct) website “A Hassid and a Heretic,” was a member of the Belz Hasidic sect when he began,…
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Culture Why I Remain Connected to the Family of Jews
Some years ago, a close relative — I’ll call him “Cousin Yankel” — got himself into trouble and landed in the local paper. Yankel was a Hasid who’d spent his entire life in sheltered environs, and one day, soon after he got his driver’s license, he made an illegal turn and was pulled over by…
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Culture Why We Must Transform Ourselves in the Month of Av
Some months ago, during an interview with a reporter, I remarked matter-of-factly, regarding my marriage of nearly 15 years, “ “I was a shitty husband.” The reporter looked alarmed, as if I’d confessed to hiding corpses in my basement. “Why do you say that?” she asked. I hadn’t meant to be so self-denigrating; I meant…
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Culture How Tammuz Helped Me Find Meaning in a Godless Universe
In several weeks from now, given past patterns, I will get a call from one or both of my two brothers. “It’s Tatti’s yahrzeit today,” they’ll tell me. “We weren’t sure if you remembered.” The 25th day of this month of Tammuz will be the 29th anniversary of my father’s death, and this month has…
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Life Why Talmud Is the Way To Be Jewish Without Judaism
After a decade-long break, I am back to studying Talmud. It was my friend Ben who suggested it, about a year ago. “We should learn Gemara sometime,” he said, using the traditional term for Talmud. It was late at night, and we stood chatting near a Brooklyn subway station, both of us tipsy from a…
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Life Why I Love Israel But I Am Not a Zionist
Last November, on tour for my book, I gave a talk at a temple in Cleveland, after which a man raised his hand: “What are your thoughts on Israel?” I hadn’t come to speak about Israel, so I kept my response brief. “I am not a Zionist,” I said. “And I don’t fetishize the idea…
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