“Orthodox Jewish nerd” may have been an insult in the past, but as “nerd” has become cool and “geek” has become chic, there is now a growing community of observant Jews who are proudly embracing this trend. How many Orthodox Jews reside in the world of fandom? No one knows exactly, but the Facebook group “Orthodox […]
Dear Jew in the City- I was raised to believe that eating traif was the same thing as watching a movie. How are mitzvos, minhagim and chumras weighed, in other words, how do I make sense of what is really required of me from the Torah, the rabbis or just by my particular community? Thank […]
For a decade of my life, I lived the Hollywood dream…a dream from which many have woken up in the aftermath of the Harvey Weinstein scandal. As an intern, assistant and junior executive, I worked alongside some of the biggest names on both sides of the camera. But when I saw what was happening behind-the-scenes, […]
Several months ago, I started seeing promos for Menashe, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2017. I was really impressed. There have been only a few movies over the years which successfully depict the Hasidic world with nuance and depth and have gotten critical acclaim (Ushpizin, Fill The Void and The Wedding Plan). Menashe seemed to be […]
How This Film About Modern Orthodox Women Turned Into a Surprise Hit The film “The Women’s Balcony” has no fancy camerawork, no huge twist, no laugh-out-loud moments, no sex and no violence (although there is some yelling — it is, after all, a movie about Israelis). Yet the movie is a breakout hit in its […]
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 […]
