JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Why are some of the most observant Jews in America planning to vote for Hillary Clinton on Tuesday? Here’s a general rule of thumb: The more religious you are, the more likely it is you plan to vote for Donald Trump. Among white evangelicals, for instance, support for Trump increases with frequency of church attendance….
An employee of a Rockland County Hasidic grand rebbe has been arrested and charged with secretly taking photos of couples having sex in a New Jersey motel. Nachman Breier, a driver and former chef for Skverer rebbe David Twersky, was arrested Monday night in Fort Lee, New Jersey, on a charge of third-degree invasion of…
The defense and prosecution made their closing arguments on July 24 in the trial of a prominent Hasidic man from the upstate New York community of New Square who stands accused of sexually molesting a young neighbor from the age of eight till shortly after his bar mitzvah. “Let no man be judged by one…
A man testified that he suffered years of child sexual abuse after visiting a respected member of his upstate New York Hasidic community for comfort on the day of the September 11 terror attacks. Laiby Stern told a court that he was sexually molested for five years from 2001 until his bar mitzvah by Moshe…
A young father in the insular Skverer sect, Shulem Deen took the one job available to him: teacher. In an exclusive excerpt from his forthcoming memoir, “All Who Go Do Not Return,” which chronicles his painful journey from 18-year-old newlywed to being expelled from New Square as a heretic, he recounts how the need to…
To his hasidim, Rabbi David Twersky is nearly akin to God. But that does not mean he exempts himself from the obligations God imposes on all Jews, at least as traditionalists understand them. Like his followers, Twersky prays to God three times a day. But unlike other Hasidic grand rabbis, Twersky does not pray in…
New Square You know the Village of New Square — that holy shtetl that keeps Judaism alive and well, that isolated Mecca of Hasidism and Follow-the-Rebbe-Blindly-ism? You may have heard of the arson attack two years ago on one of its residents, Aaron Rottenberg, which was allegedly incited by village leaders, or about the rampant…
Lukas Kranach the Elder (JTA) — For some Hasidim, the Torah is too hot to handle. A recently published Bible study guide in use in a Hasidic village in suburban New York omits certain risque passages and entire passages of the Book of Genesis, according to Israeli scholar and blogger David Assaf of Tel Aviv…
