
Rabbi Yossi Newfield is the founder of Jewish Pastoral Services.
Rabbi Yossi Newfield is the founder of Jewish Pastoral Services.
Yossi Newfield was a firm believer until a former teacher pointed out what Maimonides had written about the requirements for the messiah.
In the Chabad yeshiva in Crown Heights, where I was a student in the early 1980s, Yiddish literature was non-existent. Sure, we spoke Yiddish in school and we read the text of the Rebbe’s Yiddish sermons, but Yiddish literature was never mentioned. Then again, we didn’t read English literature either. We studied the Torah, Talmud,…
The balcony curtains suddenly parted. The Rebbe sat motionless surrounded by his three trusted rabbinical aides. On cue, the singing and chanting began: “Long live our Master, Teacher and Rebbe, King Messiah, Forever and Ever!” Hundreds of men dressed in black suits stood shoulder to shoulder on the synagogue floor craning their necks towards the…
When I was 14 years old, my father gave me a small, tattered book that was printed in 1829 by the Maskilim, the Jewish secular intellectuals. The book was part of a journal published by the Enlightenment Movement in Eastern Europe called “Bikurei Haitim.” When my father gave me the book, I was attending Oholei…
For years now, the Hasidic community has feigned compliance with New York State Education laws. While Hasidic yeshivot don’t typically provide much secular education at all, they have at least claimed that they were complying with the law. However, a recent speech by the Satmar Rebbe Aron Teitelbaum disabuses once and for all the notion…
In a last-minute backroom deal in April of 2018, a New York State Senator managed to dramatically reduce the ability of the government to enforce educational standards at Jewish day schools. Senator Simcha Felder, an Orthodox Jew who ran as a Democrat but caucuses with the Republicans, represents large swaths of the Hasidic community in…
The balcony curtains suddenly parted. The Rebbe sat motionless surrounded by his three trusted rabbinical aides. On cue, the singing and chanting began: “Long live our Master, Teacher and Rebbe, King Messiah, Forever and Ever!” Hundreds of men dressed in black suits stood shoulder to shoulder on the synagogue floor craning their necks towards the…
I grew up illiterate and uneducated and I am a graduate of a premier Hasidic Jewish Day school in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Hasidic Day schools are similar to Sunday schools, with one big difference — they run all week long. I learned nothing relevant to the 21st century modern workforce at school. At age 26,…
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