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A fake reality show trailer shines light on the real issue of child marriage
(JTA) — A three-minute trailer teases a new reality show called “Unseen Housewives,” and features women describing their experiences as child brides in forced marriages.
“I was groomed by a pedophile at age 14 and married by age 16,” one of four young women in the trailer tells the camera.
“I turned into a housewife at 14 but no one seemed to care when it happened,” says another.
There is no such reality show, although the trailer, making the rounds on social media, is describing a real issue. The video was produced for Unchained At Last, a nonprofit that’s been battling forced and child marriages for the past 12 years.
Founded by a woman who left what she calls an abusive forced marriage in a haredi Orthodox community in Brooklyn, Unchained At Last hopes the video will draw attention to its efforts to outlaw marriage for children under the age of 18, regardless of their background.
“We’re trying to solve a problem that most people don’t even know exists,” said Fraidy Reiss, Unchained At Last’s founder and executive director. “Most Americans have no idea that child marriage is legal in the U.S. Child marriage is a nightmarish legal trap.”
Unchained At Last has led a campaign that has outlawed child marriage in seven states, including New Jersey and New York. Legislation prohibiting marriage until the age of 18 is currently pending in 11 states: Maine, Vermont, Connecticut, South Carolina, Illinois, Kansas, Texas, California, New Mexico, Washington and Hawaii. The organization is particularly optimistic about the chances for passage in Vermont and Connecticut. Reiss said the group expects similar legislation to be introduced in Michigan this week.
The idea for the video came from Bruno Guimaraes, the creative director at Area 23, a Manhattan ad agency that specializes in health care campaigns, said Reiss. Guimaraes’ wife, the psychiatrist Morgan Fallor, interviewed survivors of child marriage and prepared their stories for the project.
Guimaraes’s colleague, Jihane Ghostine, produced the “Unseen Housewives” video.
“I just wanted to shed light on this topic,” Ghostine said. “I come originally from Lebanon where it’s actually legal to marry at a very young age. I think through our art and our crafts, we are maybe able to change the world in some kind of way. And this is what pushed me to do this.”
Ghostine said Gustavo Lemme, the director for the trailer, came from Sao Paulo, Brazil to helm the video. The actresses who appeared in the trailer worked at a discounted rate because they support the cause, she said.
The lines in the video are based on the real-life stories of women who were married when they were legally considered children. The trailer was shot in Tampa, Florida.
Reiss, married at 19, left her marriage after 12 years and went on to attend Rutgers University. In 2011, after working as a reporter at the Asbury Park Press and as a private investigator at Kroll, the global investigations company, she founded Unchained At Last. Initially it helped both Jewish and non-Jewish women leave arranged and forced marriages and seek custody of their children in civil court. Reis now describes herself as “a devout atheist.”
The organization has since begun pushing for legislation prohibiting marriage for children — which is legal in 43 states with parental consent or judicial approval. Opponents say child marriage is related to sexual exploitation, increased poverty, a higher risk of health complications and lower educational attainment.
Although the issue crosses various social and religious lines, Reiss has sometimes found herself facing off against Orthodox Jewish communities like the one she left and where, she said, friends were already married in high school. In 2018, the haredi Orthodox advocacy group Agudath Israel of America called the New Jersey legislation too strict, saying it wanted to see an exemption made for older teenagers who want to wed. The bill stalled under Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican, and was signed into law by his Democratic successor, Phil Murphy.
Reiss hopes the “Unseen Housewives” trailer will go viral on social media. She plans to screen it during her spring travels to promote Unchained At Last’s legislative agenda.
The group plans to continue with its “chain-in” events, in which women wearing wedding dresses appear in street protests with chains on their wrists and their mouths taped shut. More than 100 wedding gowns, some dating back to the 1940s, have been donated for the demonstrations.
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The post A fake reality show trailer shines light on the real issue of child marriage appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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‘Nobody Wants This’ star Adam Brody on Gaza: ‘Put me down as thinking it’s a genocide’
Adam Brody, the Jewish actor who plays a “hot rabbi” on the hit Netflix rom-com Nobody Wants This, called the war in Gaza a genocide in a new interview, making him one of just a few Jewish celebrities to speak out publicly against the Israeli campaign.
The comments came in an interview with GQ about Brody’s efforts canvassing for Democratic candidates in the upcoming midterms.
“Put me down as thinking it’s a genocide. Put me down as wanting a free Palestine,” he said. “It’s awful that it’s taken so much death and misery, but it does feel like it’s reaching a breaking point that it should have a while ago. I’m hopeful that another administration can really do some good and correct some of these policies that are helping that situation be as awful as it is.”
The claim of genocide in Gaza is heavily disputed. Several international bodies, human rights organizations and academic institutions have concluded Israel’s actions in Gaza since Oct. 7 fit the description, including a United Nations Commission of Inquiry. Other similar groups, like the International Court of Justice, have not applied the term.
Brody’s comments were surprising in part because he had previously kept his feelings about the war private, even as other leading Hollywood figures openly criticized it. He does not maintain a public social media presence, and he did not participate in pin-wearing campaigns or sign various petitions related to the war — an approach he indicated he might change going forward.
“I’m not wearing a pin, so I’m not inviting a certain question, and perhaps I should,” he said. “I really admire people who do. But 99% of what I’m asked about is about the show. I’m not trying to plead ignorance—here we are doing a political interview, so it makes sense that we wade into this territory—but I’ve never ducked a question, really, not a political question anyway.”
Brody — who came to fame in the 2000s as the teenager Seth Cohen on The O.C. — joins Hacks star Hannah Einbinder and Wallace Shawn (The Princess Bride) as perhaps the most high-profile Jewish actors to publicly call the war a genocide. Other Jewish entertainment figures, like Mandy Patinkin and The Zone of Interest director Jonathan Glazer, have criticized the war but stopped short of calling it a genocide.
Yet Brody’s comments are perhaps especially notable because of the character he plays on TV. In Nobody Wants This, Brody plays a rabbi dating a non-Jewish woman — introducing her to the beauty and foibles of Jewish faith and culture. Israel has been conspicuously absent from the show, with its creator, Erin Foster, saying she deliberately avoided geopolitics.
Season 3 of Nobody Wants This releases to Netflix October 22.
The post ‘Nobody Wants This’ star Adam Brody on Gaza: ‘Put me down as thinking it’s a genocide’ appeared first on The Forward.
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Why Mamdani remains focused on Israel as NYC mayor
When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke at the UN this week, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani was there — not in body, but in spirit, having condemned the Israeli prime minister and previously encouraged protests against him.
As a leader in the Jewish community, I know that many American Jews oppose Netanyahu’s government. But many also believe strongly that Israel’s survival as a Jewish homeland is critically important. They, therefore, feel boxed in by the mayor: compelled by conscience to oppose Israel’s leader and to condemn Mamdani’s repeated attacks on Israel’s existence, many of which they find offensive and dangerous.
Because of my previous work for Mayor Bloomberg, I am often asked by Jewish community members why this mayor so frequently puts them in this painful bind. The answer, I believe, lies in motivations worth understanding more clearly.
Of course, Mamdani’s focus on Israel seems partially motivated by principle. He clearly thinks Israel is illegitimate and opposes how it defends itself. I take him at his word that these convictions are sincere. But sincerity still does not explain his single-mindedness. A mayor willing to absorb this much political friction must see some benefit. But what?
To understand, let’s reexamine the 2025 election, often described as a “political tsunami.” The facts, however, are more complicated. Mamdani did defeat his closest opponent by nearly 10%, but in so doing he secured under 51% of the total vote – against a flawed and divided opposition. Viewed this way, his impressive margin seems less sweeping and much narrower.
More important than his electoral margin, though, is the coalition that produced it. His victory rested heavily on three blocs: self-identified very liberal voters; and Muslim and South Asian voters, who turned out in historic numbers. South Asian and Indo-Caribbean turnout, for example, rose 350% between 2021 and 2025, with 87% of South Asian votes going to Mamdani. Analyzing available data, I believe that, taken together, these three blocs accounted for well over 50% of all Mamdani votes.
What makes this coalition intriguing is that it consists of such strange bedfellows. The blocs differ sharply on many key local issues. On same-sex marriage, PRRI’s American Values Atlas found 33% support among Muslim-Americans in 2024, with support among very liberal Americans substantially higher. The divergence is similarly stark on policing, education, and many other policies.
In fact, it is hard to identify many things uniting these blocs besides this candidate: a skilled politician speaking the language of the left, while activating Muslim and South Asian voters just as Mayors Bloomberg and Koch activated Jewish voters and Mayors Adams and Dinkins activated Black voters.
Which brings us back to Israel.
When one barely ekes out a majority against flawed opponents, and one’s coalition is fundamentally misaligned, one must find ways to hold it together. To this end, Mamdani seems to be taking a page from Donald Trump. When Trump’s coalition buckles, he reaches for a “shiny distraction” — attacks on the press; trade wars; threatened invasions of Greenland. For Trump, the specifics are almost irrelevant; what matters is the theater of conflict and the distraction it produces.
For Mamdani, his Greenland is Israel.
Yes, it is a subject on which he holds sincere convictions. But, more importantly, it is one of few issues on which his coalition agrees. His relentless focus on Israel — to the exclusion of other worthy targets, including grave human rights offenders across South Asia and the Muslim world — is no accident. It is a political calculation allowing him to don the mantle of moral crusader while keeping his coalition on-side and united.
For those who believe Mamdani’s politics pose a danger to the Jewish community and want to slow his political momentum, this analysis yields two insights.
First, trying to persuade the mayor to soften his Israel attacks is unlikely to succeed. Doing so is not his inclination or in his political interests.
Second, and maybe more interestingly, Mamdani has a vulnerability that he seems to recognize – a fragile coalition. Allowing Mamdani to
make Israel his “shiny distraction” and engaging him on it plays his game. A different approach would be to defend Israel as-needed, but focusing efforts on pressing Mamdani to do his job – for example, elevating important issues, such as specialized high school admissions practices, on which his coalition happens to be divided.
The upshot? When smart politicians do things that seem politically risky, they usually see something others do not. Mamdani’s Israel focus offers a case-in-point. Those looking to respond should consider resisting the temptation to take the bait when possible. The wiser strategy is to engage under different rules: defending Israel when necessary, then pivoting to the difficult local issues from which Israel is meant to distract.
The post Why Mamdani remains focused on Israel as NYC mayor appeared first on The Forward.
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New voices in Yiddish: A prose and poetry contest
לכּבֿוד דעם 85סטן יאָר זינט מע האָט פֿאַרלייגט דעם ייִדישן זשורנאַל „אױפֿן שװעל“, וועט די אָרגאַניזאַציע וואָס שטיצט דעם זשורנאַל, די „ייִדיש־ליגע“, דורכפֿירן אַ קאָנקורס פֿון נײַע ייִדיש־שפּראַכיקע לידער און פּראָזע.
אַ זשורי פֿון אָפּגעקליבענע מומחים וועט אָפּשאַצן די אַרבעטן, און די דרײַ בעסטע פֿון ביידע קאַטעגאָריעס וועלן באַלוינט ווערן מיט געלטפּרעמיעס.
די פּראָזע־שאַפֿונגען קענען זײַן ביז 2,500 װערטער, און אַלע אַרײַנגעשיקטע מאַטעריאַלן מוזן זײַן נאָך נישט קיין געדרוקטע. דער טערמין אַרײַנצושיקן די שריפֿטן איז דער 31סטער אָקטאָבער 2026.
די געווינער-ווערק, און בכלל אַן אָפּקלײַב פֿון די אַרײַנגעשיקטע שאַפֿונגען, וועט מען אויך דרוקן אין דעם יובֿל-נומער. „זאָלן אונדזערע לייענערס געניסן פֿון נײַע ליטעראַרישע שאַפֿונגען אויף מאַמע-לשון!“ האָט די שעף־רעדאַקטאָרין פֿון „אויפֿן שוועל“, מרים טרין, געזאָגט.
די שריפֿטן שיקן מען דורך בליצפּאָסט צו info@leagueforyiddish.org.
The post New voices in Yiddish: A prose and poetry contest appeared first on The Forward.
