(JTA) — Like many heavily Orthodox sections of Brooklyn, Borough Park has been served for decades by an all-male volunteer ambulance corps called Hatzalah. The corps caters to a religious Jewish community with particular needs and customs — including one custom that can increase the tension for patients in already stressful emergency situations. The strict…
JERUSALEM (JTA) — A haredi Orthodox grandmother’s delivery of her 20th child was no big deal to her, but it was an exciting event for the maternity department staff at Hadassah University Medical Center in Ein Kerem. Wednesday’s delivery, a boy, was a natural birth. It was the 42-year-old woman’s 19th delivery, according to the…
If someone knew about the Hasidic community only by learning about it through recent stories in the mainstream press, I would not blame that person for coming away with confusing and contradictory perceptions. This season we saw the release of the Netflix documentary “One of Us,” in which the three protagonists describe a Hasidism of…
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,…
If you walk into Monsey’s Evergreen kosher supermarket, somewhere among the extensive schnitzel varieties and Shabbos candy treats, you’ll see a single children’s book for sale. Zai Gezunt! is the Yiddish translation of Artscroll’s Let’s Stay Safe, written by Bracha Goetz and illustrated by Tova Leff, a picture book that talks about children’s safety of…
Ever since the election, as an ultra-Orthodox Jewish woman, I was beginning to feel more and more isolated. In my politically conservative community, too few around me took issue with the saga unfolding in Washington, the racist slogans and shocking vulgarity to emerge from the White House. A few family members (all Hasidim) were my…
The Orthodox community was rattled last month when 20-year old Malky Klein, daughter of Avrohom and Rifka Klein of Boro Park, died of a heroine overdose. Social media flooded with tearful reflection. A podcast interview with Klein’s father went viral. A video tribute to the young woman got 28,000 views within a week. Over $250,000…
(JTA) — The United Kingdom’s education secretary launched an inquiry and condemned a London-based Hasidic sect for its decision to bar women from driving. Nicky Morgan on Friday called the Belz rabbis’ driving ban, which included a stipulation that Belz schools expel students whose mothers drive them to school, “completely unacceptable in modern Britain,” according…
100% of profits support our journalism
