I’ve dreaded checking the news over the last week due to the Coronavirus protests happening in Brooklyn’s Orthodox Jewish community. We live in a world full of sound bites and memes, snarky tweets and quick judgments, but none of these responses are satisfactory in understanding what’s happening in this neighborhood. As I read more and […]

A couple years ago, on a plane ride home from L.A., I sat next to an ex-Mormon woman who had an abusive childhood and suffered from bi-polar disorder. As she described the extreme and loveless environment she grew up in, not only did my heart break for her, but it also recognized her pain because […]

I don’t think Seth Rogen is a self-hating Jew. That term gets thrown around far too often, so I don’t use it without good cause. I think Rogen, like many Jews today, has a complicated relationship to his Judaism. He’s said as much in recent interviews. He is a proud cultural Jew, thinks there are […]

I was sitting in a Jewish educational institution, early on in my journey to observance, and a teaching aid was learning a section of Torah with me. She was young, and I had already established, not too bright. She had a very simplistic perspective of the world from our first interactions. But I was assigned […]

As we’ve said many times on this site: Orthodox Jews should not be held to a different standard than the rest of the world, but we know we always will be. At the same time, we should hold ourselves to a higher standard, because what is the point of being observant if you don’t actually […]

There’s something special about being one of the only Orthodox Jews for miles. I represent the Jewish community, whether I intend to or not. Sometimes I can’t help but stand out. I’m the only woman at the gym in a skirt, long sleeves, and headscarf. With my sheitel, I can blend. Although, when it’s over […]