Judge Rachel (“Ruchie”) Freier, 52, is the only Hasidic woman judge in the world. She knows she’s an anomaly, and yet she sees nothing contradictory between her deeply held religious beliefs and her high-powered, secular career. “People always make a big deal that I’m the first Hasidic woman judge, but my husband [mortgage broker David…
In the span of less than a week, President Donald Trump will have upended American foreign policy in the Middle East and delivered to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu everything he’s ever wanted from a White House. By announcing last Tuesday that he is shredding the Iran nuclear deal, and by unilaterally moving the American…
When I first started studying Talmud regularly, I attended an otherwise all-male class taught by a rabbi in a local synagogue in Jerusalem. I sat in the back corner of the room, but the walls of the classroom were transparent and I was conscious that everyone walking in or out of the main building of…
Currently at the Neue Galerie, the exhibition “Before the Fall: German and Austrian Art of 1930s,” is as fateful as its title suggests — devoted to paintings, photographs, prints and drawings made under the lengthening shadow of Nazi terror. It’s a show suffused with anxiety and denial. Many of the artists were representatives of the…
Walk into Drop Juice, an e-cigarette store in Brooklyn, and you’ll hear customers asking the normal questions about vapor, oils and battery packs — in Yiddish. The store is located next to a yeshiva in one of Williamsburg’s ultra-Orthodox sections. Virtually of its customers are Hasidic, according to Moses, the manager. They buy his products,…
One of the most iconic moments from Leon Vitali’s career in movies – which began in acting and evolved to encompass an expansive range of activities working as what might with a good degree of understatement be described as an “assistant” for legendary filmmaker Stanley Kubrick — came as he was masked and anonymous. During…
In a since-deleted video, an Orthodox child cries as a grown man makes fun of his sidelocks. Despite the fact that the video was both anti-Semitic and a violation of the child’s privacy, it went viral, with millions watching and almost 100,000 people “liking” the video before it was finally removed. Ever since I watched…
Rabbi Rebecca Einstein Schorr says that participating in the first Women’s March in 2017 was “one of the most uplifting, powerful moments of my life. It was just an incredible experience.” That moment is over. Schorr feels anti-Semitism has tainted the march. “I can’t in good conscience say that I support a movement or feel…
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