There are problems in the Orthodox Jewish community and there are challenging Jewish laws and sections of the Torah. Episode 1 of Netflix’s My Unorthodox Life basically lays out all of the major issues in Orthodoxy in the first 5 minutes of the show, just to make sure no one misses them! In this article, we […]

Last week Variety editor Malina Saval penned an important piece:  Too Jewish For Hollywood: As Antisemitism Soars, Hollywood Should Address Its Enduring Hypocrisy In Hyperbolic Caricatures of Jews. In it Saval discusses Hollywoood’s Jewish history and its troubling portrayal of Jews. While some will say, “Jews control Hollywood,” the truth is that Jews created Hollywood […]

For the first two seasons of Shtisel, I feared that featuring so many dysfunctional Haredi Jews who live such stringent and strict lives would be off-putting to Jews from less observant backgrounds. The lifestyles are unappealing in many ways, the stringencies not required by Jewish law. For anyone considering a life of more observance, the […]

As I noted in my first review of Season 3, Episode 1, what I love about this season of Shtisel is that we get to see examples of better practices in the Haredi world pushing back against worse practices as well as examples of healthier Haredi Jews than we’ve seen in other seasons. In this […]

Growing up not religious, I distinctly remember noticing Orthodox Jews passing by on the streets of New York City with seemingly no emotions. I saw men walking quickly and not smiling and women pushing strollers filled with children, and not smiling. I simply assumed they didn’t smile, laugh, feel, or have emotions like the rest […]

Whenever I see an Orthodox rabbi on TV or in movies, I brace myself for impact. While I have personally had a couple disappointing interactions with a couple rabbis in over 2 decades of being observant, by and large I’ve had positive, supportive and meaningful experiences. The rabbis that I am privileged to know are […]