The granddaughter of one of Brooklyn’s most influential Hasidic rebbes, or rabbis, died of a reported drug overdose early this week, according to an Israeli newspaper, sending the tight-knit ultra-Orthodox community into mourning and raising alarms among advocates who warn of a crisis among young people on its margins. Feige Greenwald’s death, first reported in…
A group of ultra-Orthodox Jews in London have launched a fundraising effort to keep “pure and holy” children within the community and away from the “evil culture” of a secular parent, according to a report by The Independent. he goal of the campaign is to raise £1 million to cover the legal fees of parents…
‘Binyamin” is a formerly ultra-Orthodox Jew from Lakewood, New Jersey. He was raised in a household with over a dozen siblings, and stopped receiving secular education after sixth grade. Binyamin’s parents, he said, were emotionally abusive to him and his siblings. There wasn’t a time when things were better, he remembers. It was always that…
A version of this essay appeared in Yiddish here. I was never really a Hasid. Sure, I looked like a Hasid, I quacked like a Hasid, and I even sometimes felt like a Hasid, but inside I never was one. I didn’t understand it at the time, and I denied it for years, but looking…
Shulem Deen // Photo by Pearl Gabel (JTA) — Shulem Deen, the former Skverer Hasid who for years blogged under the pseudonym “Hasidic Rebel,” has just published a memoir, “All Who Go Do Not Return” (Graywolf Press). Deen, now 40, describes his sheltered life in New Square, the virtually all-Hasidic village an hour north of New…
Leah Vincent’s new memoir, “Cut Me Loose: Sin and Salvation After My Ultra-Orthodox Girlhood,” has a happy ending. But the rest of the book has a different tone. Born Leah Kaplan, Vincent grew up in Pittsburgh, the daughter of a prominent yeshivish (black hat) rabbi. She was one of 11 children in a household she…
My 16-year-old daughter pierced her nose today. After months of negotiation and debate, in which her family members tried a variety of methods to deter and discourage her (ranging from the rational, “Won’t it hurt when you sneeze?” to the more primal “Eeewwww!”), I finally made a deal with her. I said she can do…
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