Canada’s First Female Hasidic Politician May Be Bound for Parliament Mindy Pollak, 29, is negotiating unchartered territory for someone of her background. To her knowledge, no other Hasidic woman outside Israel has ever entered the political arena as she has. Re-elected last November for her second term as a councilor in the Montreal borough of […]
’93Queen’: Film Review | Hot Docs 2018 Forget Supergirl and Wonder Woman. To see a real female superhero in action, check out Paula Eiselt’s documentary concerning the creation of an all-female, Hasidic EMT corps. 93Queen centers on Rachel “Ruchie” Freier, the co-founder of the organization that gives the film its title, and watching this intrepid […]
New York Public Schools to Offer Kosher Lunches New York City will begin a $1 million pilot program to provide kosher and halal school lunches to students in all New York City schools. Currently, approximately 38% of the NYC’s 1.1 million public school students are either Jewish or Muslim. These Incredible Photos Show What Hasidic […]
Dear JITC- Why do Orthodox Jews wear black? Sincerely, Rosie Dear Rosie- The short answer to your question is this. Now, I would love to link to that and be done but, unfortunately, while Allison is cool enough to let me include it, she’s not cool enough to let that be my answer in its […]
Meet New York’s Hasidic Jewish Bagpipe Player Not every bagpipe-playing altar boy considering joining the priesthood grows up to be a Hasidic Jew — but Ian Sherman did. Ian, known today in many circles by his Hebrew name Ephraim Eliyahu, was born to a Scottish Catholic mother and an Eastern European Jewish father, and was […]
Hey JITC- Why do Orthodox Jewish men have sidecurls? Thanks, Ivan Dear Ivan- Thanks for your question. Those sidecurls are called “peiyot” in Hebrew, meaning corners. This is commonly Yiddishized as “peiyes” and is usually rendered in English in a variety of less-phonetically-accurate spellings, including “payes” and “peyot.” (By the way, the common English-language term […]
