While getting my degree in Education, I took a social studies course where we learned about the concept of historical perspective. We often bring a “presentist” approach to our understanding of the past, using our current values and beliefs to judge people. We forget that they lived in different eras, faced different dilemmas, and had […]
Although Jews are known for their humor, most people assume that Hasidim don’t have a funny bone in their body. This assumption isn’t without cause: Hasidic Jews generally don’t smile in public. Enter Yoely Lebovits, Satmar Hasid, and the first boy in his community to be named after the rebbe. (News of the Satmar rebbe’s […]
“If you have faith in something and you want to achieve something, you should just close your eyes, go straight, and get it.”
I grew up in an anti-zionist Hasidic community in NYC. I studied in an anti-Zionist cheder (boys school) and yeshiva until I got married at the age of 20. Fast forward to today, I still live and raise my family in a predominantly anti-Zionist Hasidic community. Like in all other Jewish communities, our community has many […]
I grew up in a Hasidic home in the Har Nof neighborhood of Jerusalem and studied in Hasidic yeshivas until I got married. Because soldiers are considered heroes in Israel, most Israeli children, even haredim, dream of joining the IDF. I never believed that my dream would come true, though, until the day I met a Hasidic […]
Am Yisroel Chai. These are the infamous words uttered by my heroic uncle, Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein, rabbi of Chabad at Poway in San Diego, California. With his bleeding hands, he screamed these words to his community. With his incredible courage, he shouted out loud that we, the Jewish people, will not be stopped. We won’t […]
