In Favor of Letting Toddlers Run Wild At Temple

By Justin Sakofs for Raising Kvell

This past Shabbat, my wife, son and I visited another shul. For the record, we went to this shul not because we were unhappy with our current one, but because there was a guest speaking and friends had invited us to join them. It was during Kedusha that our 2.5-year-old son began to do what he does best: explore.


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Breaking From Hasidism, Online

Exploring the Internet led me to knowledge, questions, and, ultimately, leaving the Hasidism I’d grown up with

By F. Vizel

In my Hasidic community, people knew me as the young newlywed, mother of one, daughter of so-and-so, and married to such-and-such, with a scarf over my head and an apartment in the new development. But on the Internet, I was anonymous. I was anyone. I was everyone. I was a mystery, and I was hidden. I was whoever I wanted to be, and I could say whatever I wanted to say without fear.

I didn’t intend to create this dual identity. I hadn’t been prepared for what could happen to Hasidic life in the Internet age, because no one knew. My husband purchased a laptop with Internet access for some business ventures, and when I used it I chanced upon some blogs by fellow Hasidim and soon after created my own. It was an impulsive act. The topics of conversation online were enthralling and broke every taboo. It broke the prohibition of men and women conversing and shmoozing, it broke the barriers that divide those who left from those who are in the community. It gave anyone a space to be heretical and outrageous without the social repercussions that usually come with it: ostracization, having your children expelled from the Hasidic schools or even worse, your parents sitting shiva over you.

The social environment online was diverse and gritty, and I was there anonymously. I could finally say things, express my opinions and confusion and use my own voice, which had been trained to be silent. No one knew or would ever know that indeed I was so-and-so’s daughter, the pious-looking woman who swayed to and fro in prayer like everyone else in synagogue. Under the guise of an authorial pseudonym, I commented, posted, and debated. Not for many months after I began blogging did I realized that my little literary adventures on the Internet—on those dawns while the challah was rising and my Hasidic family was still fast asleep—were life-changing acts.

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How to Be Respectful to Your Racist Grandparents

By Alina Adams for Kveller

My husband and I have a rule for ourselves: We don’t argue with old people.

This rule applies primarily to our parents and their friends, but also old people in general.

We also have a rule for our three kids, ages 14, 10, and 7: You will respect your elders. Whether you agree with them or not. Especially when you are a guest in someone else’s home. That’s just Etiquette 101 in our book.

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How One Exec Runs Busy Digital Agency While Staying True to Her Faith

360i Global CEO Sarah Hofstetter on Balancing Work and Orthodox Judaism

By Alexandra Bruell for AdAge

When 360i's global CEO Sarah Hofstetter is out of the office, she puts IsTodayAJewishHoliday.com in her automated email response. The link has a dual purpose. It adds a little humor to what would otherwise be a dry out-of-office reply, and it convinces clients that she's not making up Jewish holidays.

This is just one of the ways Ms. Hofstetter, an Orthodox Jew from Long Island, N.Y., balances her professional life with her personal life and faith.

The 39-year-old CEO runs one of the most-buzzed-about digital agencies and has been promoted three times in two years. She's managed that success while taking care of two kids; keeping kosher despite the wining-and-dining demands of running an agency; and completely shutting down between sunset on Friday and sunset on Saturday to observe Shabbat, the Jewish day of rest.

After graduating from Yeshiva and then Queens College, Ms. Hofstetter worked as an editorial assistant for a New York Times syndicate. A year later, at 22, she got married and decided to go to what she humorously calls the "dark side," handling in-house PR and investor relations at telecommunications company IDT. "We were really young," she said of herself and her husband. "We just needed enough money to cover costs."

Eight years later, she decided to set up her own shop. IDT was her first client, and 360i soon followed. At IDT she hit a glass ceiling, she said, but working directly with a CEO for so long taught her about business and about how to make choices. "The things you choose not to do are as important as things you choose to do," she said. It's a motto of sorts that's guided her at 360i.

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When Your Kid Gets Rejected From Jewish Day School

By Yossi Fendel for Raising Kvell

We are a “dual-school family.” Our daughter is in 6th grade at the local Orthodox Jewish day school while our son is in 3rd grade at a public school.


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A Trip to Ukraine Reveals My Family’s Connection to a Literary Legend

Visiting Odessa, the city where I grew up, I learned how Isaac Babel turned my great-great-grandmother into an iconic character

By Misha Galperin for Tablet Magazine

These days, Odessa is all over the news. But it is a specific Odessa—one of chaos and street clashes; one where children may be evacuated for protection; one with low wages, zero-based production demand, and rising unemployment; one with over a million citizens, some of whose embattled photos dominate the front-page news during Ukraine’s intense struggle for self-definition.

Last summer I took my older daughter, Anna, to see a different Odessa—the one where her father grew up. It was the Odessa that was supposed to be a “porto franco”—a free city that would attract talent and wealth to benefit this “New Russia” that enabled German Jews like my grandfather’s ancestors to bring with them European culture and Reform Judaism and start a new life there. That is how Odessa became a cradle of modern Russian culture, in large measure because of the Jews.

The current Russian-Ukrainian conflict is not about Jews, though it may put an end to that piece of Jewish history—which will be a loss for everyone. But before Jewish Odessa disintegrates, it had one more unexpected gift for me: a literary pedigree.

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The basis for our trip was a visit undertaken by a delegation of the World Zionist Organization. I took the visitors on a tour of the Jewish Odessa of my family, who were contemporaries and comrades of Pinsker and Jabotinsky.

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The Shema

Three biblical passages work together to create a model for remaining faithful to a belief in God and in God's unity.

By Alan Mintz for MyJewishLearning.com; Reprinted with permission from Back to the Sources: Reading the Jewish Classics.

In the Shema, three passages from the Bible form the theological center of the prayer book.

The passages are Deuteronomy 6:4-8 and 11:13-22 and Numbers 15:37-42. The first of these begins with one of the most famous and resonant statements in all of Jewish literature. During the service, the pray-er recites it with eyes closed and in a moment of great concentration:

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