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YouTuber Drew Binsky makes a travel video about Hasidic Brooklyn
(New York Jewish Week) — For eight years now, vlogger Drew Binsky has made a living traveling the world, creating content that aims to lift the curtains on remote communities for his 3.6 million YouTube subscribers.
He’s visited places as hard to reach as North Korea and South Sudan. But in his most recent video, Binsky, who is Jewish, doesn’t even leave the country. Instead, he takes his camera to Brooklyn to explore the different Hasidic movements, members of what he describes as “the most religious and closed-off community in America.”
“I’m really interested in different belief systems of every religion,” Binsky, whose real last name is Goldberg, told the New York Jewish Week via phone from his home base in Arizona. “Micro-communities and people that take anything to the extreme are fascinating to me.”
The 43-minute video, twice as long as a typical Binsky production, has garnered nearly 800,000 views since it was posted on YouTube on Monday. In it, Binsky, who grew up Reform, explains the history of Hasidism in New York and the customs and traditions of the insular community.
The video took six months and a team of five to film and produce, Binsky, 31, said. It begins in Washington Heights, with Binsky on camera talking to Yeshiva University students about how Hasidic Judaism is different from their brand of Modern Orthodoxy — and featuring some seriously delicious-looking shawarma from an Amsterdam Avenue eatery called Golan Heights — before heading to the Hasidic enclaves of South Williamsburg and Borough Park.
In Brooklyn, Binsky is accompanied by ex-Hasidic community member and transgender activist Abby Stein. Together they eat matzah ball soup, sesame chicken and stuffed cabbage at Gottlieb’s Deli, visit Eichlers Judaica shop and drop by both a newsstand and synagogue to learn more about worship and local customs. At the close of the video, Binsky celebrates Shabbat with the family of Shloime Zionce, a Hasidic Jew and fellow travel vlogger, who lends him a bekishe (a traditional black overcoat) and shtreimel (a fur hat) to help him look the part of a Hasidic man.
“As a Jew and someone who has celebrated Shabbat in many countries around the world, I must say that this one was the most special,” Binsky says in the video.
The idea for a video about Hasidic Brooklyn stemmed from the years-long online friendship between Binsky and Stein. After connecting on social media, the pair began to plan an excursion to Williamsburg to learn more about Stein’s life and childhood: Stein had grown up in the community, became a rabbi, married a woman and had a son before leaving the community when she came out as transgender in 2012.
“I think it’s helpful to see Williamsburg and the Hasidic community to really get a better sense of things and the work I’m doing to support LGBTQ people,” Stein, 31, told the New York Jewish Week. “As we were doing that, I think that’s when Drew basically realized, there’s a larger story about the community as a whole.” That, in turn, led the pair to explore Borough Park and its environs as well. Stein explains that Borough Park is slightly more open to outsiders than Williamsburg, and so Binsky may have better luck with interviews.
Famous for having visited every country in the world, it’s rare for Binsky to make videos about life in the United States — he estimated only 1% of his 1,000-plus videos are about American communities. “It’s nothing against the U.S. As an American, I’m more fascinated with other places because this is my own country. But if I can find these insular pockets, that’s really interesting,” Binsky said. “The most extreme Jews are Hasidic but it wasn’t until I actually went to South Williamsburg and to Lee Avenue, deep into the community, that I really got to learn about it.”
Haredi Orthodox communities have been bristling under the attention they’ve received of late, starting with criticism for the way many members flouted COVID-19 rules early in the pandemic and lately after a series of New York Times investigations said Hasidic yeshivas were failing to provide adequate education in secular subjects.
Orthodox activists say such coverage fosters stereotypes that have led to an uptick in street attacks on visibly Orthodox Jews. In January, Agudath Israel of America pushed back with a billboard and website campaign, called KnowUs.org, meant to “dispel stereotypes” about the community. Most of its content defends the yeshiva system.
Stein understands why Americans are fascinated with Hasidim. “Americans and American TV have been obsessed with cults and fundamentalist communities for a long time,” she said. “In some ways, [the fascination] is an opportunity — to lean in, to raise awareness, to help people who have left or people who want to leave, and also to affect potential positive change within the community for people who are happy being there.”
In the video, in which Binsky talks to both members and ex-members of the community of all ages (though aside from Stein, Binsky briefly talks to only one other woman). He’s rebuffed by some passersby but is embraced by others who are eager to share their stories.
“They really didn’t want to talk to me, they didn’t want to be interviewed,” Binsky said, adding it was one of the more challenging videos he’s made in a first-world country. “To not be welcomed by my own community is really frustrating.”
Still, he said, “I thought I told a well-balanced story. Non-Jewish and secular Jewish viewers have told me it’s the best video I’ve ever made.”
The only backlash he’s received, Binsky said, has been from a handful of Hasidic community members who criticized his friendship with Stein and his decision to center her narrative in the video. In some emails he’s received, Binsky said she was referred to as “Abe” and misgendered by her ex-community.
“I knew that shooting with Abby would be controversial, but I did it because I wanted to have that story about the community,” Binsky said. “But I also want to be like, look, she’s a real person, and you guys have to deal with it.
The top comments on the YouTube video are indeed positive. “This was absolutely beautiful,” wrote one user. “As a semi hasidic Jew myself I was touched by your coverage. I was moved to tears watching Shlomo bless his children on Friday night.”
“I have loved every single one of your travel videos — but this may honestly be your best work yet,” another viewer wrote. “To get this level of insight is incredible and brings a human element to the mystery!”
While the pair acknowledged that the video could be seen as exploiting a community that Americans are already obsessed with, neither Stein nor Binsky felt it was done in bad taste. “I would say when you’re working with people in the community, it’s not that it’s OK for us to tell our stories, it’s important for us to be able to,” Stein said.
In the past, Binsky has made videos about Jews in Ethiopia, Turkmenistan and Yemen, and in 2019 he visited Zebulon Simontov, who was famous for being the last remaining Jew in Afghanistan. He is currently planning a trip and to create a video about the Igbo Jews in Nigeria.
“I have a very global audience, so I try to educate people about the world and make high-quality content that can be viewed by any age and any nationality,” Binsky said. “My shtick is to have a lot of courage and go to places and just share the real story from my perspective.”
“Am I ‘exploiting’ them? Yes, to some degree,” he added. “But I still feel like I have to do that as part of my mission to tell the story. Otherwise, the story won’t get told.”
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The post YouTuber Drew Binsky makes a travel video about Hasidic Brooklyn appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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PEN America president, defending Israel’s critics, resigns after report warns of threats to Jewish authors
(JTA) — The president of PEN America resigned over the weekend in protest of a report on boycotts targeting Jewish and Israeli authors, part of yet another round of internal division over Israel at the literary free-speech institution.
Dinaw Mengestu, an Ethiopian-American novelist and Bard College professor, told The Atlantic he was stepping down because he believed the PEN report, “A Silent Moratorium,” failed to defend the free-speech rights of participants in the movement to boycott Israel.
“It’s the First Amendment that allows all of us to engage in boycotts, not PEN America,” Mengestu told the publication. “PEN America as a free expression organization is supposed to defend that right.”
The author did not respond to multiple Jewish Telegraphic Agency requests for comment, but in an Instagram post Monday alluded to an interest in creating a new organization to rival the prominent nonprofit, which defends the free expression rights other writers.
In response to an interview request, PEN sent a statement to JTA saying it was “grateful” for Mengestu’s leadership and would “respect” his decision. The statement also alluded to PEN’s own past turmoil: “We tell hard stories, in politically challenging moments, about writers from a range of perspectives, even when it’s uncomfortable for us given our own recent history.”
In its report, published on its blog, PEN described “Jewish and Israeli writers who feel that the mainstream literary world is increasingly shutting them out because of their identity, nationality, or views.” Interview subjects include several Israel critics, as well as literary agents who assert that they face more difficulties signing Jewish authors after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel and amid the subsequent war in Gaza. The report also repeatedly cited a JTA report about a 2024 viral list of “Zionist” authors to boycott.
Among other details, PEN’s report revealed that Israeli novelist Etgar Keret and public radio host Ira Glass had cancelled a planned live event in Australia over fears of threats and protest.
“This silencing and exclusion of writers is a threat to what PEN America is fundamentally committed to defending: a culture of free expression for all,” according to the report.
In addition to the report, PEN also altered its institutional policy toward cultural boycotts, which the organization has long opposed. Although its report on Jewish authors asserted that boycotts “threaten the free expression rights” of their targets, the revised guidelines say that the group will also defend the right of writers to participate in boycotts.
Mengestu’s resignation comes at a perilous moment for Jews facing cultural boycotts, both within the standard-bearers of PEN and elsewhere. PEN’s Jewish former longtime CEO stepped down in 2024 following months of blowback from rank-and-file authors who felt the organization was insufficiently critical of Israel and caused PEN to cancel a festival for global authors.
Since the leadership change, PEN leadership has published and retracted a condemnation of a boycott effort trained at an Israeli comedian and also published a report cataloguing Israel’s “cultural destruction in Gaza.”
Mengestu had assumed the role of board president in 2025. But PEN’s report about Jewish and Israeli writers on Thursday, he wrote, “makes clear that [change] will not happen.”
The Anti-Defamation League said it was “deeply troubled” by Mengestu’s resignation Monday. “Freedom of expression means opposing efforts to boycott, silence, or exclude writers because of their identity or nationality,” the organization tweeted, saying that the author’s decision to leave PEN over his objections to the report on Jewish authors “sends a chilling message.” Jewish authors also objected.
“Imagine running a free expression org and resigning because it refuses to blacklist authors based on their nationality,” the author David Zweig wrote on X, musing whether Mengestu would object to boycotting authors from his birth country: “Ethiopia doesn’t exactly have a good human rights record.”
In response to The Atlantic’s story that quoted sources from inside PEN who were critical of his resignation, Mengestu wrote a lengthy Instagram post Monday in which he stated, “This piece is about trying to suppress constitutionally protected speech,” criticized past PEN reports critical of the BDS movement, and added, “What PEN America fails to understand is that boycott is a form of dialogue.”
He announced his intention to “help make something better,” receiving affirmative comments from notable authors including Viet Thanh Nguyen, Angela Flournoy, Jewish pro-Palestinian novelist Jess Row and Pulitzer Prize-winner Benjamin Moser, author of a forthcoming history of Jewish anti-Zionism.
Other Jewish authors on the left were among those defending Mengestu’s decision to step down.
“Dinaw is one hundred percent correct that this kind of fake victim propaganda can be used to support anti-Boycott legislation which violates the First Amendment and is everywhere as popular support for Palestinians grows,” author Sarah Schulman wrote on Facebook. Calling PEN’s blog about Jews “one of those fake anti-semitism pieces,” Schulman added, “If PEN wants to survive, they have to get out of the Israel/Zionism business.”
The post PEN America president, defending Israel’s critics, resigns after report warns of threats to Jewish authors appeared first on The Forward.
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Church of England backs study of Palestinian Christian document accusing Israel of genocide
(JTA) — The Church of England’s legislative body voted Monday to encourage churches across England to engage with a document produced by Palestinian Christians that accuses Israel of genocide despite requests from Jewish organizations and Britain’s chief rabbi to reject it.
The document is titled “Moment of Truth: Faith in a Time of Genocide” and is also known as Kairos II, after the Palestinian Christian movement Kairos Palestine that produced it. It describes Israel’s military campaign in Gaza as a genocide, states that Israel is a “colonial enterprise built on racism,” and says decades of “occupation,” “apartheid” and “settler colonialism” are at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The vote on Monday does not adopt the accusations as church doctrine but says the church should hear the documents as “heartfelt expressions of the lived experience of Palestinian Christians,” and to engage with them in order to better understand the conflict.
Ahead of the debate in York, several Jewish organizations expressed concerns, and Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis asked Synod members to reject the amendment. Mirvis called Kairos II “deeply concerning” and that it “risks undermining decades of careful relationship-building” between Christians and Jews.
“It is truly shocking that a document which purports to speak in the name of truth contains so much falsehood,” he said.
Afterwards, the president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, Phil Rosenberg, issued a statement calling the passage of the motion “highly problematic.”
“Kairos Palestine may come from a place of genuine pain, but the falsehoods and distortions of Kairos II, including its erasure of Jewish identity and experience, is a prescription for more division and not the answer to conflict in the Middle East,” he said.
“This document reflects the pain and trauma of the Palestinian people. As a pastor, I hear the cry of our Palestinian Christian sisters and brothers — a cry that rises from the ruins of Gaza, and from the violence and oppression of the West Bank,” she said.
She added, ”I also hear the concerns of the chief rabbi, the co-leads of the Movement for Progressive Judaism, and the Board of Deputies, and I thank them for their honesty.” She said the church remained opposed to antisemitism and committed to safety for Israelis as well as Palestinians.
The Synod debate followed Mullally’s visit to the West Bank in June, where she met Palestinian Christian communities in Birzeit. During the visit she said, “I will use my role as Archbishop to seek the peace you desire and the freedom you deserve.”
The debate marks the ascendance of Israel-related issues in another major church, after the Catholic Church’s Pope Leo XIV angered Jewish groups soon after being elected last year by endorsing an investigation into whether Israel committed genocide in Gaza.
The post Church of England backs study of Palestinian Christian document accusing Israel of genocide appeared first on The Forward.
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Mike Pence denounces alleged arson of Israeli flag in his Indiana hometown
(JTA) — Former Vice President Mike Pence has weighed in against antisemitism after officials in his Indiana town say a costly fire may have been caused by arson to an Israeli flag displayed on a local barn.
The alleged arson broke out early Friday morning, damaging a historic home in Zionsville, Indiana, where Pence lives, and causing an estimated $150,000 in damages, according to the Zionsville Police Department.
Zionsville Mayor John Stehr said during a press conference on Friday that officials believed the fire began when an individual set fire to an Israeli flag that had been displayed outside the building alongside an American flag. The town later announced that the FBI had joined the investigation and that officials were examining whether the arson “may have been motivated by bias” but said no determination had been made.
“Absolutely despicable,” Pence tweeted on Sunday. “There can be no tolerance in America for Antisemitism or political acts of violence, and it is heartbreaking to see in our adopted hometown of Zionsville, Indiana. We thank God no one was hurt and urge anyone with information to contact law enforcement.”
Pence has long cast himself as a staunch supporter of Israel, including after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on Israel, and has also repeatedly spoken out against antisemitism in the conservative movement and beyond.
Republican Indiana Sen. Jim Banks also condemned the alleged arson in a post on X Saturday. “Antisemitism will not be tolerated. Not in Zionsville. Not in Indiana. Not anywhere,” Banks wrote. “Thank you to the federal, state, and local officials working to bring the perpetrators of this despicable arson attack to justice.”
On Sunday, the Jewish community in central Indiana hosted a rally condemning the alleged arson attack, chanting, “We will stand up,” according to local outlet Fox 59. While Zionsville does not have a large Jewish community of its own, other suburbs of Indianapolis have significant Jewish populations, and Zionsville is also the longtime home of a Reform movement summer camp, the Goldman Union Camp Institute, which is in session now.
“The founding fathers founded a country where we have the ability to resolve differences among each other; we don’t do it by firebombing homes,” rally organizer David Schiller told Fox 59. “It’s inexcusable and unacceptable.”
The Zionsville Police Department did not respond to an inquiry from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency about the status of the investigation on Monday.
The post Mike Pence denounces alleged arson of Israeli flag in his Indiana hometown appeared first on The Forward.
