Frieda Vizel
By Frieda Vizel
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Opinion Don’t call Hasidim anti-science. They kept COVID at bay all summer.
There’s been a rise in COVID cases among Hasidim, and the world is pointing a finger. See? Hasidim have been ignoring COVID precautions, they’ve been doing their old (old) normal like nobody’s business, no masks or measuring tape or shields or baths of hand-sanitizer, and now naysayers are saying I-told-you-so with barely masked glee, pun…
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Opinion The government is feeding a Hasidic persecution complex
Imagine you are a Hasidic teenage boy, a yeshiva student. You usually have school all year round, six days a week; your purpose in life is to study Torah, especially before your arranged marriage at the age of 18 or 19 while you are not yet distracted by family and work. From the time you…
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Culture “Unorthodox” is a dangerous, misleading fairy tale of transitioning from the secular world
Before I left the Satmar Hasidic community in Kiryas Joel, I believed my journey would be similar to that of Esty in the Netflix miniseries “Unorthodox.” Like Esty, who is immediately welcomed into a circle of diverse and good looking Berlin musicians, I’d be easily embraced into the secular social milieu. Like Esty, who gets…
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Life I left the Satmar Hasidic community. ‘Unorthodox’ is a grossly inaccurate depiction of that world.
Scene: It’s Shabbes when Esty, a young Satmar Hasidic woman, is about to make her escape from her repressive community to Berlin, where she has decided to start a new life as a secular woman. So opens the new Netflix miniseries ‘Unorthodox’. She collects her valuables from her underwear drawer, pulls cash out of her…
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Life Why So Many Hasidic Men Are Such Aggressive Drivers
A heated conversation erupted this week after the actress Amber Tamblyn tweeted that she had nearly been hit by a Hasidic man while walking through the streets of Brooklyn’s Hasidic South Williamsburg. She described being sideswiped while walking with her baby, and seemed to feel intentionally targeted because she was a woman. If anyone in…
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Life Judge Ruchie Freier Is A Hasidic Role Model. I Wish I Had Her Opportunities.
If someone knew about the Hasidic community only by learning about it through recent stories in the mainstream press, I would not blame that person for coming away with confusing and contradictory perceptions. This season we saw the release of the Netflix documentary “One of Us,” in which the three protagonists describe a Hasidism of…
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Life How Ultra-Orthodox Woman Found an Egalitarian Minyan
The author (left) and her son at the Museum of Natural History in New York // Courtesy of Frieda Vizel On Saturday, I was walking on Amsterdam Avenue in New York City, crossing over to the other side with my son Seth when a man with white stubble and a New Jersey accent stopped me…
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