There are times when your heart continuing to beat has to be enough.
There was something different about us, those whose parents came to halachic Judaism later in life -- and I wondered if it was just me who noticed it.
I spent a year with Chabad Hasidim in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. I exulted, starkly disagreed, and considered glorious possibilities—often in the same moment.
What it's like to believe in something that so many on both "sides" see as contradictory. And why I think it's that very fact that makes it so wonderful.
Simply being unapologetically Jewish is a political act.
I am in a classical art gallery in London and the portraits all blur into a crowd of static, monotonous...
What if there's a non-Hasidic version of every Hasid just waiting out there and living their own life?
Group superiority is not my thing. I prefer to see every soul's stunning potential.
From Hasidic questioners to rebellious nuns and priests, limit-pushers within tight-knit groups have a special camaraderie. I'm jealous.
