What’s the key ingredient to help a secular Jewish BBC producer achieve his life-long dream of becoming a stand-up comic? For Ashley Blaker all it took was becoming ultra-Orthodox. Blaker grew up in a traditional home in the UK and attended private  school – the same one that Sacha Baron Cohen went to. He had dreams […]

  Esteemed Educator Faces Opposition As He Takes Over Hempstead School District An esteemed educator known for fixing failing New York City schools is ready to roll up his sleeves in one of the worst performing school districts on Long Island. Until now, “A Hasidic Jew is not somebody you’re going to find in Hempstead,” […]

  While the problem of drug addiction is a universal one, much of the Orthodox Jewish community has not always been comfortable facing it head on. Thankfully, change is beginning to taking place with a raising of awareness like never before. With more than 700 people coming to an event last Monday night in Brooklyn […]

In 2013, a Hasidic filmmaker took the world by storm with her critically acclaimed feature length film, Fill the Void. It was distributed by Sony Pictures and premiered at the Venice Film Festival. Its writer-director, Rama Burstein, is a hasidic baalas teshuva, whose newest effort, The Wedding Plan, comes out this weekend (it opens May 12 in […]

The Jews Who Saved Monticello Thomas Jefferson is buried at Monticello, his estate in Charlottesville, Virginia, along with Rachel Phillips Levy, a traditional Jew. How did a Jewish grave end up in Monticello? The answer lies in the history of a family whose own story is every bit as American as that of Jefferson himself. […]

People might often think of Orthodox Jewish women as “barefoot and pregnant,” but probably don’t think of them as “pregnant and running marathons!” Beatie Deutsch, an American-born mother (of now five!) grew up athletic but stopped formal sports activities for many years when she started a family. Then, on a whim a couple years ago, […]