Deborah Feldman was born and raised in the Hasidic community of Williamsburg in Brooklyn, New York. She is the author of the New York Times Bestselling memoir, UNORTHODOX: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots (Simon and Schuster.) Currently, she is working on a follow-up memoir, which finds her embarking on independence as a single woman and mother, finding a new kind of Jewish life for herself, and discovering the far-flung yet familiar community of many like-minded "religious refugees" of all faiths around the world, due out from Blue Rider Press, Penguin, in October of 2013.
Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
Posters promoting an upcoming fund-raiser for a rabbi charged with sexually abusing a teenage girl blanketed Jewish shopping strips in Williamsburg Monday - sparking a campaign protesting the charity bash.
Feminist Media: Street Harassment and Facebook and Orthodox Religion.
Shame on Humans Of New York. Supporting street harassment behind religion. HONY has told 91,367 people that if you are a powerful religious man, we can forget that you propositioned a kind young woman to be your escort for the night. FUCK YOU HUMANS OF NEW YORK. Last night the usually fantastic…
Breaking the Silence on Child Sex Abuse
Ultra-Orthodox Jewish victims of molestation and their families tread a difficult road as they seek justice through the secular court system, even as some communities begin to loosen restrictions on reporting abuse.
Aol You’ve Got goes live at 6 am tomorrow.
Breaking ties with Hasidic Jews - from BBC News
ludmirermoyd: Two Hasidic newspapers: an issue of Der Blat which I bought on March 15 and an issue of Der Yid from the week before that. Both of them are Satmar, but each lends support to a different faction: I believe Der Blat is run by followers of Aaron Teitelbaum and Der Yid supports his brother Zalman. They’re both thick and wordy, so I’m still reading them, and it’s fun to analyze the advertisements. (As an aside, I love how both of them say they are the voice of Orthodox Jewry, though Der Blat’s claim is more sweeping than Der Yid’s.)
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I picked them up at a convenient store that sold newspapers in multiple languages, as is common in New York. A Latino employee looked at me and asked, “You read that stuff?”
“Yeah,” I replied. “To practice my Yiddish a little.”
He shook his head. “They can’t live without their papers.”
Trying to get a response from the Hasidic community about the atheist billboards…
Tumblr is the great equalizer. I liked what you had to say, so I’ll link to it here.
Never seen this before, but love it. ludmirermoyd:
“Abstract Concepts of Time.”
New York, I love you.
From my Op-Ed in The Daily: Exodus, Part 2
“I’ll probably go to another seder this year. Not because I have to, but because I’m looking forward to hanging around other Jews like me, who get that Judaism is still a conversation. After the Talmud stopped being written, religious Jews moved from an era of debate and discussion to a phase of rigid adherence. But there are those among us who still remember how to think for ourselves, and I know the guys who wrote the Talmud would appreciate that. They really knew how to sit around a table and schmooze, and that’s something we should still be doing. Let’s celebrate the diversity of our voice, and understand that there really isn’t one way to do things, but there’s one way that’s right for you, and you should be free to find it.”
Click on the link to read the entire article.
The Princeton Review released its annual college rankings lists earlier this month, including lists of the top 20 schools with the most religious and least religious students.
The top five schools with the least religious students are: 1) Bennington College in Bennington, Vt. 2) Reed College in Portland, Ore. 3) Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y. 4) Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. 5) Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, N.Y.
—From The Christian Post
Jacob Gluck filmed my appearance at Chulent last night and wrote a lovely article to accompany the footage here.
