Frimet Goldberger
By Frimet Goldberger
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Life Satmar Rebbe Blames Cancer on Makeup
Ladies, there is a cure for breast cancer! No more pink Octobers, Angelina Jolie op-eds on mastectomies and suffering the world over. Last Tuesday evening, February 4, in a roomful of learned men, the Satmar Rov of Williamsburg, Mendele Teitelbaum, announced that Sephora eye shadow in all colors and MAC lipsticks, the regular and long-lasting…
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Life A Mother and Daughter, Raised Worlds Apart
Last Sunday, in a glittery princess frenzy, we ushered in my daughter’s seventh year. I love children’s birthday parties and all the fabulous will-certainly-break-tomorrow presents that abound. Yes, I shamelessly admit that I ogle the gifts, lick icing off the birthday cake and become a member of the children’s club, for two kids, twice a…
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Life Those Limelight-Seeking Orthodox Feminists
It’s probably because I’m female — and Orthodox to boot — that, much as I try, I find it hard to relate to Jewish men who feel religiously unfulfilled unless they keep the center stage to themselves, and the women out of their club. Rabbi Avi Shafran, the high-profile Haredi spokesman for Agudath Israel, implies…
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Life ‘Having it All’ as an Ex-Hasidic Woman
Lean in, Sheryl Sandberg, another feminist bites the dust and realizes she can’t “have it all.” This epiphany came as I boarded a Delta flight from Montego Bay to JFK two weeks ago. My husband and I took a weeklong trip to magnificent Negril Beach, or what I like to call Paradise, Jamaica, to celebrate…
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Culture Lipa Schmeltzer Reaches For Broadway and Beyond
It’s not every day that Town Hall, New York City’s fabled home to Billie Holiday, Bob Dylan and other legendary performers, gets to welcome a yarmulke-clad crowd of 1,500. And it is not every day that the yarmulke-clad crowd of 1,500 gets to see one of its own perform on a Broadway stage. On the…
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News One Hasidic Housewife’s Inspiring — and Unusual — Journey to College and Beyond
On a cold spring evening last year, my Jewish literature professor took his Sarah Lawrence College class to a klezmer performance by the band Zion80, a mash-up inspired by the music of Shlomo Carlebach and Fela Kuti. Inside the small, stuffy room at The Stone, a music venue in New York City, I watched students…
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Opinion A Community of Exes — Hasids, That Is
Frimet (third from right), holds up her Footsteps certificate with the other fellows. I am a Footsteps member and supporter. I am also an observant Jew. To the critics of Footsteps, a not-for-profit organization that helps those seeking to leave their ultra-religious communities, this statement may seem like an oxymoron. Until about a year ago,…
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Culture Ex-Hasidic Woman Marks Five Years Since She Shaved Her Head
I remember the first time I felt the cold, prickly air on my newly shaved head. I remember looking in the mirror. I remember staring at the pile of auburn hair in the vanity sink of the cozy basement apartment I now shared with my husband of less than a day. I remember my mother…
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