Eli Reiter is a teacher and writer living in New York. He hosts and produces the long-form storytelling show “Long Story Long.” Comments can be emailed to the author directly.
Eli Reiter
By Eli Reiter
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Life Let’s Celebrate New Year’s Like Religious Jews Celebrate Rosh Hashanah
As I plan for New Year’s, RSVP’ing to parties and finding plus ones, I think about last New Year, just three months ago. Rosh Hashanah — the Jewish New Year. It was a call I had avoided for five months. I had procrastinated and retreated in embarrassment — but it had to be done. [Rosh…
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Life For Observant Jews, Halloween Is A Night To Fear — Especially After Pittsburgh
As a student in an Orthodox yeshiva high school, we were dismissed early on Halloween in the daylight hours, because my rabbis were afraid of anti-Semitic violence against us. Instead of the usual 7 pm dismissal, we got out at 4:30. A letter on the wall categorized it, in Hebrew, as a “day of throwing…
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Life What’s With The Orthodox Anti-Chabad Bigotry?
There was a recent hate crime against Jews. No, it was not a swastika, and no, it was not a desecrated Jewish grave. It occurred in a yeshiva high school, as a prank for the month of Adar, in the spirit of Purim. On social media, photos circulated of various tables and dioramas mocking Chabad’s…
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Culture Finally, A TV Show Shows How Journalists Mistreat The Ex-Orthodox
Given that “High Maintenance,” the HBO series about weed dealers and their regular clients situations is set in New York, it was only a matter of time before the show featured characters from the Ultra-Orthodox community. “Derech,” which premiered in February, concerns a reporter’s romantic interest in an ex-Chasid, but two common patterns differentiate it…
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Life The Yeshiva I Left Behind
I looked through the windowpane for a good four minutes, my palm sweating on the doorknob. What am I doing here? I thought, staring at all those men, poring over their books and talking with their study partners. I couldn’t face them. Peeking through the corner of the small window on the door, I felt…
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Life Why Orthodox Women Get Blind Drunk Way More Than You Think
As Rachel stumbled up the stairs to her parents’ house in Midwood, I hid behind the taxi’s half-closed tinted windows, hoping that her ultra-Orthodox father didn’t see me. He probably would have suspected the worst. We hadn’t fooled around but it was just as bad: Rachel had gotten dangerously drunk. I’d gone out with some…
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Opinion Liberal Jews Who Turn Their Backs On Rubashkin Are Hypocrites
This week, Sholom Rubashkin, the imprisoned Lubavitch Jew and former head of Agriprocessors, was released from prison after President Donald Trump commuted his sentence. Upon the urging of bipartisan leaders, from Orrin Hatch to Nancy Pelosi, President Trump released Rubashkin twenty years earlier than planned, though he wasn’t pardoned. At the news of his release,…
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Community Hilchos Marijuanakkah
The holiday of lights is super lit. Get holy and high with these Hilchot Marijuanakkah, the real high holy daze. 1) One must light one joint for the first night, and two joints for the second, etc. One must go up in number, not down. 2) One must share their stuff because of the commandment…
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