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
-
News Hasidic Women Feel Pressure for Children, But Fathers Fret About Providing
As a man, I will never know what it is like to be a mother. I will certainly never know what it’s like to be a Hasidic woman expected to bear children year after year and withstand the challenges and pressures of motherhood — like the ones Judy Brown described so poignantly in her two…
-
The Schmooze How Many Sins Can One Hasid Commit?
What do you do if you’re “a Yid who thinks he’s a Goy”? You go to your gentile friend “Boris,” of course, for help writing “The Aveirah Song.” Aveirah is Hebrew for “sin,” which, “Boris,” being a gentile and all, would be an expert on. And what kinds of sins does a gentile (or wannabe-gentile)…
-
Opinion What Is Really Happening in New Square?
Eighteen years ago, as a Hasidic student at the yeshiva of New Square, I found myself swept up one morning in the frenzy of a mob. I, along with around two dozen young men, ransacked the private dormitory room of a fellow student. We broke open the door, smashed the lock on the bedside cabinet,…
-
The Schmooze Ex-Haredi Artists Grapple With Their Pasts
‘Protection’ by Leah Vincent A photo of a woman wrapped in phylacteries might not seem very bold after Leonard Nimoy’s “Shekhina” project. But to many of the artists at the opening of a new art exhibit called “All in the Eye,” a photograph of a woman adorned with tallit and tefillin, eye to the camera…
Explore
Most Popular
- 1
Culture At Eurovision, Israel’s near triumph shows the limits of tolerance
- 2
Opinion The profound internal contradiction that could spell doom for Hillel
- 3
Sports An op-ed compared an NBA team to Israel as underdog success stories. Then the threats poured in.
- 4
Fast Forward Talarico won’t campaign with Democratic House candidate who wants to open ‘a prison for American Zionists’
In Case You Missed It
-
Opinion In Trump’s assault on democracy, echoes of Nazi Germany but new glimmers of hope that America will be different
-
Art This Jewish artist hadn’t painted in more than 5 decades. Then came Oct. 7.
-
Opinion How can I explain to my 93-year-old mother why it suddenly seems ok to hate Jews?
-
Looking Forward The bizarre antisemitic book that taught me to better understand Judaism