Twenty-two years ago director Gidi Dar did something groundbreaking. He was part of a team that brought Ushpizin, a positive, nuanced, authentic depiction of Hasidic Jews to Tribeca. Ushpizin gave way to films like Rama Burshtein’s Fill The Void, shows like Shtisel and somewhat mainstreamed the idea that Hasidic and Haredi Jews are human, worthy […]

The Jewish internet has been abuzz about “Bread of Affliction,” the recent episode of Apple’s Your Friends and Neighbors, which aired closer to Lag B’Omer than Passover, but who’s counting? Actually, lots of people! (Google “sefiras haomer” if you didn’t get that!) What I saw repeated over and over again was how authentic and detailed […]

If you’re a person who cares about negative stories involving Orthodox Jews in the news, the recent agunah cases that keep popping up are quite troubling. If you’re a person who cares about people, ALL agunah cases are quite troubling. Since I am both, I have been pretty bummed out lately about how to deal with […]

Recently, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman shared a surprising statistic: people saying “please” and “thank you” to ChatGPT costs the company tens of millions of dollars a year in computing power. Every extra word requires additional processing, and when you multiply that across hundreds of millions of users, basic politeness suddenly becomes expensive. And yet people […]

I know I don’t have to and I don’t judge women who don’t. When I was studying in seminary in Israel for the year during college (I took a year off after my freshman year), a girl in class asked my rabbi if baggy snow pants are OK to ski in. He said, “Yes.” (Though, it […]

US figure skater Alysa Liu, made a remarkable comeback, winning an Olympic gold medal last week after taking two years off from her sport. Fans noticed the joy that was infused into her routine. Her story isn’t just inspirational for the regular reasons. It is also bizarrely connected to the Makom branch of our organization, […]