Frimet Goldberger
By Frimet Goldberger
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Opinion As Anti-Semitism Rises, Can We Still Criticize Our Own?
As anti-Semitism continues to rise in our streets and Jewish identities are being stolen by white supremacists intent on stoking division, many in the Jewish community are calling for unity. But an insidious infighting of a new sort has begun to take shape over whether we are allowed to criticize Jewish groups at a time…
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Life What Makes The Hasidic Community Choose Tribe Over Offspring?
About 10 years ago, right around the time the tectonic plates beneath my structured world began to shift, eventually destroying my entire existence as I knew it, there was a campaign in my hometown of Kiryas Joel and beyond to “save the neshama of a young girl.” The young girl, a toddler at the time,…
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Breaking News New Square Rabbi Acquitted of Molesting Neighbor for Years
Moshe Menachem Taubenfeld, a prominent figure in the upstate New York Hasidic community of New Square, was acquitted by a judge of molesting a boy for several years. Taubenfeld, 55, was accused of abusing Laiby Stern, a neighbor, who claimed the older man began an abusive reign of terror when he went to him for…
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News Closing Arguments Made in New Square Hasidic Abuse Trial
The defense and prosecution made their closing arguments on July 24 in the trial of a prominent Hasidic man from the upstate New York community of New Square who stands accused of sexually molesting a young neighbor from the age of eight till shortly after his bar mitzvah. “Let no man be judged by one…
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News Did Hasidic Neighbor Start Sex Abuse Reign of Terror on September 11?
A man testified that he suffered years of child sexual abuse after visiting a respected member of his upstate New York Hasidic community for comfort on the day of the September 11 terror attacks. Laiby Stern told a court that he was sexually molested for five years from 2001 until his bar mitzvah by Moshe…
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Culture How Shulem Deen Lost Everything and Found Himself
All Who Go Do Not Return By Shulem Deen Graywolf Press, 288 pages, $16 Family and God are the essences of a Hasid’s life. From cradle to death, one is taught to love, fear and obey God, and to cherish and respect family and all the customs, traditions and quirks that are the hallmarks of…
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Life Under Cover: Taxonomy of The Yarmulke
Under Cover from Jewish Daily Forward on Vimeo. If you see my husband and son walking on the street, you will instantly know that they’re Orthodox Jews — because they are wearing small, round cloth caps, more widely known as yarmulkes. Much like the sheitel, or wig, that many Orthodox women wear, you can tell…
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News Hasidic Enclave Keeps Its Secrets Amid Elusive Rebbe’s Tight Control
To his hasidim, Rabbi David Twersky is nearly akin to God. But that does not mean he exempts himself from the obligations God imposes on all Jews, at least as traditionalists understand them. Like his followers, Twersky prays to God three times a day. But unlike other Hasidic grand rabbis, Twersky does not pray in…
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