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Yeshiva education reform activist launching independent haredi news organization
(JTA) — Naftuli Moster, the founder and former executive director of Yaffed, the advocacy group focused on improving secular education in haredi Orthodox Jewish schools, is launching a news organization focused on what he sees as a news desert in the haredi world.
With a board that includes seasoned Jewish journalists, Shtetl: Haredi Free Press will launch online in 2023, and Moster said he is exploring a print option as well. Shtetl’s online announcement said it had seed funding for two years; Moster declined to comment on who the funders are but emphasized that the media organization would produce independent journalism.
“Every community needs a free press,” Moster told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “Members of this community, my community, deserve a free media as well. Shtetl’s existence is an exciting development in the Jewish and media spaces, and we are looking forward to making a big splash in early 2023.”
Moster, who grew up in a haredi Orthodox family in Borough Park, Brooklyn, stepped down from his position at Yaffed in September after a decade as its founder and leader. During that time, Yaffed got the attention of city and state education officials as the group filed multiple lawsuits meant to increase access to secular education in haredi yeshivas. In turn, he drew the ire of haredi Orthodox leaders, who resented an ostensible insider inviting scrutiny of their educational institutions.
The haredi communities of Brooklyn and New York’s exurban Rockland and Orange counties are currently served by successful print and online newspapers, in English and Yiddish, that tend to be protective of community interests, including the yeshivas.
Elad Nehorai, an ex-Hasidic writer and progressive activist, said these sites are more akin to community newsletters than journalistic enterprises, publishing local interest stories like death and wedding announcements, notices about community events and stories about construction of new synagogues or schools. National and world news coverage tends to focus on the haredi community in Israel and syndicated news copy about events outside of the religious world.
“The haredi world in general is not used to the kind of journalism that exists in the secular world,” Nehorai said. “In the secular world, investigating wrongdoing of leaders is a normal thing.”
For example, it was a secular newspaper — the Israeli daily Haaretz — that in 2021 reported on allegations surrounding Chaim Walder, a once-celebrated Israeli haredi children’s author, who was accused of having sexually assaulted more than 20 women, and several underage girls. Only after the allegations became a prominent topic of conversation in haredi communities did the press there begin to cover them — often with apparent sympathy to Walder.
“Very often if you look at the press there, it’s more about building community,” Nehorai said of the haredi world. By contrast, “If you open the New York Times it’s generally a lot of negative stories.”
Leaders of the haredi community were incensed when, in September, the New York Times published a major investigation that found that in New York’s Hasidic yeshivas, “generations of children have been systematically denied a basic education, trapping many of them in a cycle of joblessness and dependency.”Backlash from the Hasidic and other Orthodox communities began before the story was even published, with people claiming the New York Times and the Jewish reporters themselves were biased and even antisemitic in their reporting.
Moster envisions a role for Shtetl that will foster “important discussions that are crucial for the well-being of the Haredi community and beyond,” according to an online announcement. At the same time, “it will produce content that other outlets are unable, unequipped, or unwilling to provide to their readers, whether owing to the lack of resources, cultural competency, access to insiders or Yiddish language proficiency.”
The project is currently recruiting board members, full-time and freelance reporters, editors and marketing professionals. Its founding board includes journalists Larry Cohler-Esses of The Forward and Ari Goldman of Columbia Journalism School, neither of whom is haredi, as well as Adelle Goldenberg, a recent Harvard University graduate who grew up in the Hasidic neighborhood of Borough Park. Goldenberg was the winner of the 2021 Yaffed Changemaker Award for her assistance to haredi students who want to go to college outside of the yeshiva system.
Goldman, a former New York Times religion reporter who attends a Modern Orthodox synagogue, told JTA he became familiar with Moster’s work with Yaffed about five years ago. He said he was impressed by Moster’s efforts to get haredi young people a strong secular education and believed that haredi communities could benefit from improved journalism, as well.
“I want to be supportive of an effort that tries to shine more light on a community about which a lot is hidden and unknown,” Goldman said. “I’m also very interested in good journalism, which I think is a cornerstone of our society. And I want to see it put to the best of use in the haredi community.”
Critics of Shtetl, purporting to be from within the haredi and Orthodox world, have already voiced their opinions on social media, claiming that the new media endeavor has some sort of agenda to undermine their communities.
The backlash echoes the one that Moster has received for a decade already, when his education advocacy even earned him the label of “moser,” reflecting a dangerous accusation that he had inappropriately involved secular authorities in Jewish affairs.
“The people who are reacting negatively don’t see it as, ‘Oh they’re just writing negatively about us,’” Nehorai said. “They see it as traitorous. They see it as someone who’s turned on us. And what’s fascinating about that is that it doesn’t matter if you are haredi or you are ex-haredi, what occurs then is you are labeled as an outsider.”
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The post Yeshiva education reform activist launching independent haredi news organization appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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This Orthodox filmmaker strove to find common ground between Jews and non-Jews
Menachem Daum (1946-2024) was not your typical Orthodox Jewish filmmaker. In his work, the late director often strove to find common ground between Jews and non-Jews, Orthodox and secular Jews, Polish Catholics and Jews (which he wrote about in these pages) and even between Palestinians and Holocaust survivors.
Fordham University is hosting a free retrospective of his films at Lincoln Center in New York. Called “Hidden Sparks,” the retrospective kicks off with Daum’s 1997 work A Life Apart: Hasidism in America — the first in-depth documentary portrait of Hasidim in New York City, produced and directed by an insider who knew the community intimately. The film is narrated by Leonard Nimoy.
In the documentary, we see a grandfather chatting in Yiddish with his children and grandchildren at home on Purim; a lively scene at the local butcher’s, and a young African-American’s unexpected reaction to a group of Hasidic men engaged in the tashlikh ritual in Brooklyn.
The film will be followed by a panel discussion that includes anthropologist Ayala Fader; filmmaker Oren Rudawsky (Daum’s frequent co-producer and co-director) and Daum’s wife, Rifke Daum.
On Tuesday, Feb. 3, 2026, Fordham will also host a screening and discussion of Hiding and Seeking: Faith and Tolerance after the Holocaust — a documentary that follows Daum as he travels with his two grown sons to the Polish village of Dzialoszyce to track down the Christian farmers who hid their family from the Nazis.
What’s fascinating about the film is the obvious reluctance of his sons, married yeshiva students, to go on the trip at all, poking fun at their father’s liberal attitude towards the Poles — and then seeing their reaction when they finally meet the now-aging children of those farmers.
As Oren Rudavsky put it: “A Life Apart was our attempt to humanize Haredim for outsiders. Hiding and Seeking is our attempt to humanize outsiders to the Haredim.”
The post-screening discussion for Hiding and Seeking will include the Polish-born historian Natalia Aleksiun, filmmaker Oren Rudavsky, and Daum’s son, Tzvi Dovid Daum. To register for the film, go here.
The retrospective also includes the 2026 film The Ruins of Lifta (2016), a documentary centered around the only Arab village abandoned in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war that wasn’t destroyed or repopulated. It will be followed a week later by a conversation with Israeli historian Hillel Cohen about the legacy of The Ruins of Lifta.
There will also be a screening of portions of Menachem Daum’s unfinished film Memory Keepers, about a group of non-Jews — mostly Christian Poles — working to restore and preserve Jewish cemeteries in Poland.
The film retrospective, which takes place at the McNally Amphitheater in Manhattan, runs from Jan. 27 — Feb. 17. For more information and to register, go here.
The post This Orthodox filmmaker strove to find common ground between Jews and non-Jews appeared first on The Forward.
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Could a video game help combat antisemitism on college campuses?
At a time of escalating antisemitism in the online gaming community, Julia Sebastien’s upcoming PC game, StrangeLand, which explores the difficulties of Jewish life at an Ivy League college, offers an alternative: the digital game not as an agent of antisemitism, but as a bulwark against it.
“What I want players to experience with this game,” Sebastien told me over Zoom, “is the sequence of choices and trade-offs a Jewish student in a really rigorous institution has to make.”
Yet she also has a longer-term, and perhaps loftier, aim for StrangeLand: That college educators and administrators use it as a guide of sorts to Jewish student life in general, and in particular, to “antisemitism on campuses,” she said.
Still, its target audience is one you might expect — current and former Jewish students at North American colleges, who, Sebastien believes, need help communicating “to family and friends when they’re feeling too tired or burnt out by everything that’s been going on.”
Sebastien has made digital games before. Indeed, she’s had a couple, both also academic in tone, published in digital journals. (One explored the effects of burnout in academia.) But thanks to a grant from the nonprofit Maimonides Fund, StrangeLand is her most ambitious, well-funded effort yet.
It’s also a little more personal.
Sebastien grew up in what she described as a “pretty religious Jewish suburb,” a modern orthodox community in Toronto. She attended Jewish day school and was fluent in Hebrew. But she never really took to prayer, she told me, and even as a teenager she had begun to see her Jewishness as an intellectual pursuit more so than a religious one.
She stayed in Toronto for her BA at York University, but then ventured south to Cambridge, Mass., where in 2022 she got a Master’s in Learning, Design, and Technology from Harvard, before starting a PhD in media psychology at Cornell (she’s partway through).
StrangeLand is loosely based on her own experiences in the academy, though it also comprises anecdotes from dozens of other Jewish undergraduates, graduates and alumni, whom Sebastien consulted via a survey. Players will “inhabit the life of a Jewish student who has just left home to start graduate school at an Ivy League university, sometime in the 2010s,” she said. There, they’ll be presented with a series of scenarios, organized thematically.
These scenarios will be “evergreen” Jewish student dilemmas: negotiating obligations around Jewish holidays alongside the traditional academic calendar; staying late at a laboratory on a Friday night versus leaving to meet other Jewish students for Shabbat dinner. And some will have a grain of antisemitism, at least according to Sebastien: how to respond to an off-color remark in a social setting, say, or whether or not to wear a Magen David necklace in public.
There’s no winning or losing, per se. Rather, StrangeLand will aim to illustrate the “impossibility of satisfying the demands of these two worlds; that, really, is the crux of the gameplay,” Sebastien said.
Notably absent from StrangeLand, however, are Zionism and Israel, the very topics that have elevated the Jewish collegiate experience to something of a national issue. Their omission is no accident. “I’m not trying to shine a light on what’s happening now,” Sebastien said. “I’m trying to educate people about antisemitism.”
And to include such divisive subjects wouldn’t help Sebastien fulfill this aim, she feels. “As a designer, I need to consider the very real possibility that for some players, StrangeLand might be their first exposure to antisemitism as a distinct concept,” she said. “And I feel that the best way to bring antisemitism awareness to diverse audiences is to use examples that are clear, universal, and evergreen.”
These hot-button issues, moreover, would seriously upset the vibe Sebastien is going for. “I actually don’t want characters in the game shouting horrific things,” she said. “I don’t want to jar the player. I want to explore concepts in a safe way that can still be emotionally poignant and meaningful and educational.”
The game will have a retro feel, then, a lo-fi aesthetic — the heavily-pixelated, Game Boy-style gameplay that Sebastien adored as a child — which she’s confident will reinforce these feelings of comfort and safety. (She cited Tomorrow, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, Gabrielle Zevin’s best-selling 2022 novel about a pair of Jewish, Harvard-educated video game developers in the ‘90s, as one of the game’s inspirations.)
In short, Sebastien wants StrangeLand to be a respite from the pressures of campus life, while at the same time illuminating, especially for those non-Jewish players, the complexities of the Jewish student experience.
How it can accomplish this without meaningfully discussing Zionism is an open question. To my mind, StrangeLand seems to be as much a work of history as anything else. The antisemitism Sebastien repeatedly referenced during our conversation was of the classical U.S. variety, the WASP-y strain of the 1960s and 1970s often found in Roth and Bellow novels. Nowadays, of course, discussions about campus antisemitism are typically focused on something else entirely. So it’s a little hard to square Sebastien’s broader goal for StrangeLand, that it eventually be part of DEI curricula, with its lack of contemporary examples.
But Sebastien is confident players will leave StrangeLand with a more complete understanding of Jewish student life. “I want this to speak to and for Jewish students now and in the past,” she said. “That’s what this game is to me.”
The post Could a video game help combat antisemitism on college campuses? appeared first on The Forward.
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People are enchanted with this 12-year old singer of Yiddish songs
דאָס איז איינער פֿון אַ סעריע קורצע אַרטיקלען אָנגעשריבן אױף אַ רעלאַטיװ גרינגן ייִדיש און געצילעװעט אױף סטודענטן. די מחברטע איז אַלײן אַ ייִדיש־סטודענטקע. דאָ קען מען לײענען די פֿריִערדיקע אַרטיקלען אין דער סעריע.
אין זומער 2020, בעת די װעלט איז געװען פֿאַרשפּאַרט צוליב קאָװיד־19, האָב איך געקוקט נאָך אַ מאָל און װידער אַ מאָל אױף אַ װידעאָ װאָס האָט זיך באַװיזן אױף דער סאָציאַלער מעדיע. דאָרטן האָבן צװײ קינדערלעך — דינה סלעפּאָװיטש און פּיניע מינקין — געזונגען אַ ייִדיש פֿאָלקסליד װעגן די בולבעס װאָס אָרעמע ייִדן האָבן געגעסן אין מיזרח־אײראָפּע.
איך בין פֿאַרכּישופֿט געװאָרן. אַ פּנים בין איך נישט געװען די אײנציקע, װײַל באַלד נאָך דעם איז אַן אַרטיקל װעגן דעם װידעאָ אַרױס אינעם פֿאָרװערטס.
דעמאָלט האָב איך אָבער נישט געװוּסט אַז דינה סלעפּאָװיטש, נישט געקוקט אױף איר צאַרטן עלטער, איז שױן געװען אַ געניטע זינגערין פֿון ייִדישע לידער. דאָ זעט מען װי זי האָט צו פֿיר יאָר אויף אַ חנוכּה־פֿאָרשטעלונג אין דער ניו־יאָרקער אַרבעטער־רינג שולע געזונגען פֿון אױסנװײניק דאָס קינדער־לידל „האָב איך מיר אַ מאַנטל“. איר טאַטע, דער כּלי־זמר און כּלי־זמר־מוזיק פֿאָרשער זיסל סלעפּאָװיטש האָט זי אַקאָמפּאַנירט אױף דער קלאַװיאַטור. מען הערט אינעם װידעאָ װי דער עולם זינגט מיט מיט איר דעם רעפֿרען.
דינה און איר טאַטע האָבן רעקאָרדירט אַ היפּשע צאָל װידעאָס פֿון ייִדישע לידער במשך פֿון די לעצטע פֿינעף יאָר. אָט איז אַ שפּיל־רשימה װוּ מען קען קוקן אױף זײ. איך האָב ספּעציעל ליב „שנירעלע פּערעלע“, װאָס דינה זינגט מיט אַ בעכער אין דער רעכטער האַנט, װי דאָס ליד באַשרײַבט. „דײנו“, װאָס זי זינגט מיטן טאַטן, איז מונטער און אָפּטימיסטיש. „דאָס עלנטע קינד“, קאָמפּאָנירט אין דער װאַרשעװער געטאָ מיט װערטער פֿון שמערקע קאַטשערגינסקי, זינגט זי װײך און מיט טרױער.
אין 2025 האָט דינה צו צװעלף יאָר אָפּגעהאַלטן אין אַ ניו־יאָרקער טעאַטער די װעלט־פּרעמיערע פֿון איר טאַטנס ליד „אױפֿן טײַכל שלום“. די קאָמפּאָזיציע איז באַזירט אױף אַ ליד פֿונעם פּאָעט און שרײַבער באָריס סאַנדלער, װעמענס 75סטן געבוירן־טאָג האָט דער קאָנצערט אָפּגעמערקט. זי האָט אױך דעבוטירט װי אַ סאָליסטקע מיט דער נאַציאָנאַלער ייִדישער טעאַטער־פֿאָלקסבינע בעת זײער חנוכּה־פּראָגראַם אין היברו־יוניאָן קאָלעדזש. זי פֿיגורירט אויך אין װידעאָס, אַרײַננעמעננדיק „זאָל שױן קומען די גאולה“, קאָמפּאָנירט נאָכן חורבן מיט װערטער פֿון שמערקע קאַטשערגינסקי.
לעצטנס האָב איך געשמועסט (אױף ענגליש) מיט דינה און איר טאַטן װעגן איר באַציִונג צו ייִדישע לידער — אַמאָל, הײַנט צו טאָג און האָפֿנטלעך אין דער צוקונפֿט.
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שטערן׃ װי אַזױ האָט דינה אָנגעהױבן צו זינגען לידער אױף ייִדיש?
זיסל סלעפּאָװיטש: זינט זי איז געבױרן געװאָרן האָב איך איר געזונגען אױף ייִדיש. זי האָט נאַטירלעך אָנגעהױבן נאָכצוזינגען די ייִדישע לידער. מיר רעדן רוסיש בײַ אונדז אין דער הײם, װײַל איך און מײַן פֿרױ זענען אױפֿגעװאַקסן אין בעלאַרוס. אַװדאי רעדט דינה ענגליש אין שול, און ענגליש און רוסיש מיט די חבֿרים. ייִדיש און ייִדישע לידער זענען אָבער געװען אַ טײל פֿון אונדזער משפּחה־לעבן, און זי האָט זײ אײַנגעזאַפּט אין זיך במשך פֿון איר טאָגטעגלעך לעבן. כאָטש זי האָט זיך נאָך נישט געלערנט ייִדיש סיסטעמאַטיש — גראַמאַטיק אאַז״װ — הערט מען װי נאַטירלעך זי זינגט אױף ייִדיש.
שטערן׃ דינה, װי לערנסטו זיך אַזױ גוט אױס די לידער?
דינה סלעפּאָװיטש: קודם־כּל זינגט מײַן טאַטע פֿאַר מיר אַ נײַ ליד, אַזױ פֿיל מאָל װי איך דאַרף. כ’האָב אַ גוטן זכּרון, הײב איך גיך אָן צו געדענקען די מעלאָדיע. דערנאָך דיסקוטירן מיר די װערטער, זעצנדיק זײ איבער אױף רוסיש און אַ מאָל אױף ענגליש. װײַל איך קען אַ סך ייִדישע לידער זענען עטלעכע װערטער מיר שױן באַקאַנט — מער און מער װערטער מיט דער צײַט.
שטערן: װאָס זענען דײַנע באַליבטסטע ייִדישע לידער?
דינה סלעפּאָװיטש: איך פֿיל זיך פֿאַרבונדן מיט „שנירעלע פּערעלע“, װײַל איך האָב דאָס געזונגען אין מײַן ערשטן װידעאָ בעת קאָװיד־19. און אַװדאי איז דאָס ליד װעגן בולבעס נאָענט צום האַרצן, װײַל אַ סך מענטשן האָבן געקוקט אױפֿן דאָזיקן װידעאָ און הנאה געהאַט פֿון אים. „אַרום דעם פֿײַער“ האָב איך אױך זײער ליב. װען איך זינג דאָס ליד פֿיל איך זיך רויִק און פֿאַרבונדן מיט אַנדערע מענטשן.
שטערן: װאָסער מין רעאַקציע באַקומט איר אױף די װידעאָס?
זיסל סלעפּאָװיטש: מיר באַקומען זײער אַ פּאָזיטיװע רעאַקציע. איך פֿאָר איבער דער װעלט צוליב מײַן מוזיק־אַרבעט, הער איך אָפֿט אַז מוזיקערס און ליבהאָבערס פֿון ייִדיש אין אַנדערע לענדער קוקן אױף די װידעאָס, אָפֿט מאָל מיט זײערע קינדער. לערערס פֿון ייִדיש און פֿון ייִדישער מוזיק װײַזן זײ אין די קלאַסן.
דינה סלעפּאָװיטש: מײַנע חבֿרים קוקן אױף די װידעאָס, און איך מײן אַז זײ האָבן זײ ליב!
שטערן: דינה, װי פֿילסטו זיך װען דו זינגסט פֿאַר אַן עולם, ספּעציעל אין אַ טעאַטער אָדער אױדיטאָריע?
דינה סלעפּאָװיטש: נערװעז. מײַן מאַמע העלפֿט מיר אָבער אַ סך. זי איז אַלע מאָל בײַ דער זײַט װען איך האַלט בײַ זינגען. מיט איר הילף באַרויִק איך זיך און מאַך זיך גרײט צו גײן אױף דער בינע.
שטערן: צי װילסטו זיך לערנען ייִדיש סיסטעמאַטיש, אפֿשר מיט ייִדיש פּאָפּ?
דינה סלעפּאָװיטש: יאָ, דעם קומעדיקן זומער, װען איך װעל נישט האָבן אַזױ פֿיל שולאַרבעט צו טאָן. האָפֿנטלעך װעל איך זיך לערנען רעלאַטיװ גרינג, װײַל כ’האָב געהאַט ייִדיש אין די אױערן לעבנסלאַנג. און איך קען שױן אַ סך װערטער.
שטערן: צי װעסטו װײַטער זינגען ייִדישע לידער פֿאַר אַן עולם און רעקאָרדירן װידעאָס?
דינה סלעפּאָװיטש: יאָ. נאָך דעם װי איך װעל זיך לערנען ייִדיש מער סיסטעמאַטיש װעל איך קענען זינגען װײַטערדיקע לידער. איך זינג מיטן ניו־יאָרקער פֿיליאַל פֿונעם נאַציאָנאַלן קינדער־כאָר, װאָס העלפֿט מיט געזאַנג־טעכניק. מיר זינגען אױף ענגליש, שפּאַניש, יאַפּאַניש, העברעיִש, האַװאַייִש…די דיריגענטן העלפֿן אונדז מיטן גוט אַרױסרעדן די װערטער בעת מיר זינגען. איך האָב ליב דאָס זינגען אױף פֿאַרשײדענע שפּראַכן. ייִדישע לידער װעלן מיר אָבער בלײַבן ספּעציעל װיכטיק, װײַל ייִדיש איז אַזאַ גרױסער טײל פֿון מײַן לעבן.
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