Rukhl Schaechter

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Haredi and Out of the Closet

By Rukhl Schaechter

For the first 20 years of her life, Chani Getter was no different from the other girls in the Nikolsburg Hasidic sect in Monsey, N.Y. As the second of five children, she earned good grades at school and had close friends. At age 17, she was introduced to her future husband, also 17, and after one meeting the wedding date was set.Read More

‘Unvarnished’ Messages From the Past

By Rukhl Schaechter

Among the first sites that tourists visit during a tour of Jerusalem is the Wailing Wall, whose name stems from the old Jewish practice of coming to the site to mourn the destruction of the Temple. Even non-Jews place notes in the wall’s crevices to express their respect and awe for the Jewish holy site.Read More

Camp in the Catskills: A Summer Tradition

By Rukhl Schaechter

In 1959, a group of Holocaust survivors, most of them living in the secular, Yiddish-speaking enclave of the Amalgamated Houses in the Bronx, did something remarkable. Each of them shelled out $500 of hard-earned money to found a summer camp in the Catskill Mountains. The survivors’ goal was to pass on to the next generation their own devotion to democratic socialism and to Yiddish language and culture, mirroring their childhood experiences in Poland between the two World Wars. They called it Camp Hemshekh, which means “continuation.”Read More

My Father’s House; My Mother Tongue

By Rukhl Schaechter

On April 7, the eve of Passover, Israeli television did something unprecedented: It aired a film in which the entire dialogue was in Yiddish.Read More

In Sweden, Middle East Conflict Plays Out in the Town Square

By Rukhl Schaechter

After counter-demonstrators critical of Israel interrupted a recent pro-Israel rally in Malmo, Sweden, the Jewish community held a second rally last week. The follow-up gathering was a bold challenge not only to the community’s increasingly vocal pro-Palestinian neighbors, but also to a perceived rise in anti-Israel sentiment in the Swedish media and government and in other institutions.Read More


 

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