Why I left activism for Hasidic education | Naftuli Moster - The Frieda Vizel Podcast

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Quested this interview, and you know, to many in the community,
I'm still that kind of like boogeyman, and I felt
like it's important for people to know that I've moved on.
And not only have I moved on, but the truth
is I have some regrets.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
Hello and welcome or welcome back to this channel. My
name is Frieda bazel Non. This channel likes poytopics related
to Judaism, New York City and oftentimes Acidic Judaism, which
is the world that I come from. I have no
agenda except to create dialogue, understanding and new perspectives. Recently,
I was approached by enough toly most serve figure who
I think is feared to say is considered controversial in

(00:37):
the acidic community. He asked me to interview him, hoping
to share his personal journey as an exositic person who
has gone through significant transformation over the years. After some thought,
I agreed to the conversation. Aftruly became well known as
the founder of YAFED, which stands for Young Advocates for
Fear Education, a group that pressured the government to enforce

(00:59):
education standards in Hasidic boys' schools. This made him, shall
we say quite unpopular within the community. He led Yeah
Fed until stepping down in twenty twenty two. I've had
my own discussions with him, shall we say, disagreements, which
we discussed on the Jewish Currents podcast. Since then, he's
gone on to launch a Stettle, an online journal reporting

(01:20):
on that rady world. How was that was that their?

Speaker 1 (01:24):
Yes, that's great?

Speaker 2 (01:25):
Well, Hi, how are you great?

Speaker 1 (01:28):
Thank you so much for having me and for agreeing
to sit down with me.

Speaker 2 (01:31):
You know, we've had different views on the whole education issue,
but I feel like we've often had fruitful discussions. One
thing I have tried to avoid on my YouTube channel
is having a fight with someone. And sometimes I have
no problem having a discussion with someone I disagree with.
I just never wanted to have like a contentious discussion.
And anyway, that's a part of why I've often refrained

(01:55):
from inviting guests who have different views than me, even
though people have encouraged me to do so. But anyway,
I want to start from the beginning of your story
so viewers get to know you a little bit. Do
you want to start from the beginning of where you
grew up?

Speaker 3 (02:10):
First?

Speaker 1 (02:11):
I wanted to say thank you for having me, and yes,
I requested this interview, which is not so common for
me to do, you know, as you probably know, in
the past decade or so or more. Basically, I've done
interviews all the time, especially for Yafed, and I usually
didn't have to request it. But in this case, I

(02:31):
felt like I wanted to specifically get on and talk
about my work that I've done in the past and
sort of how you know, I've evolved, because to this day,
I still get a lot of emails, text messages and
all kinds of things when anything, anytime something happens in
the community, in the Karadi community, especially if fit in

(02:53):
Voel's education, and you know, to many in the community,
I'm still that kind of like boogeyman, you know, like,
and I've felt like it's important for people to know
that I've moved on. And not only have I moved on,
but the truth is, I have some regrets about how
I went about my advocacy, and frankly, I probably would
have even been more successful if I had done things differently.

(03:15):
So I wanted to sort of put that out there
and we'll talk about that second.

Speaker 3 (03:19):
Specifically with you. I felt like you would.

Speaker 1 (03:24):
Uniquely be able to relate to my evolution. You know,
I followed your work for some time obviously, and I
know you followed some of mine. But I don't know
if you remember, but about fifteen years ago you and
I were together fundraising for Footsteps, I do, you know,
at a parlor meeting.

Speaker 2 (03:40):
And it's a fancy thing, right, yeah.

Speaker 1 (03:43):
Like many you know, And shortly after you sort of
took like this sort of a drastically different journey, and
to some degree I judged you for it. I felt
like maybe you were jealous of the success of Footsteps
or eventually jealous of me even and you know, like
we sort of like went on completely different journeys. But

(04:04):
now I'm actually beginning to appreciate your perspective a lot more,
and I felt like I wanted to come here and
tell you that, and also, you know, of course speak
to your viewers about it as well. So you asked
me to to sort of start from the beginning, take
it through my you know, journey and how I sort
of got to where I am. So, you know, I
grew up in the custotic community in Borough Park, the

(04:27):
middle child of seventeen kids. I was part of the
Belts Cussidic sect. It's very large in Israel. Anyone who's
visited Israel, chances are they went to see what we
often sort of nicknamed them by some mk dush because
the shool is so magnificent and it has a little
bit of a resemblance to the sort of the Second Temple,

(04:47):
or at least how people draw it. And then at
about the age twenty one, I sort of felt, you know,
I began thinking differently and questioning my upbringing, and not
only that, I actually felt, you know, betrayed by the
system where I was raised in. And of course my
biggest issue was the Shev education, where you know, I
felt here I was trying to go to college get

(05:08):
a degree with the goal to become a psychologist, and
I felt like I was like literally starting from scratch,
like from elementary level. I had a broken English, I
had no high school diploma, I had no understanding even
of how college operates, no foundational knowledge that sort of
would help me through the college even the application process,
let alone actual college. So yeah, I was pretty angry

(05:31):
at the time, and I felt like I had nothing
to lose because I already felt sort of disowned or
shunned by the community anyway, so I figured, you know,
I can go and fight this battle. You know now,
The truth is, you know, even back then, I understood
that ideally at least change should sort of quote unquote
come from within, and I did make some attempts at it,

(05:54):
you know, but you have to understand, like I didn't
come from like a powerful family or family of a
schoon him and people with connections a family we were
actually rubbish, but but like a small rebel of family.
It's like we come from big royalty. But here my
father had a small shool and you know, it wasn't
like he had a big following or anything like that.

(06:16):
We had a very large family, but no no connections,
no you know, aschoonists as in you know, like a
form of advocacy in the Haredi world. So take for example,
some of like TV Gluck from Amudim. I'm sure you
know the organization. You know, he's not your typical Hasidish guy,
and in theory it would be hard for him to
sort of bring change from within. But he comes from

(06:37):
a very strong, powerful family with strong connections, and I
think that was that enabled him to sort of build
up this very strong organization, a very admirable organization doing
that kind of work from within the community.

Speaker 3 (06:50):
So I didn't have any of that.

Speaker 1 (06:52):
So I was sort of starting, you know, scraping together
you know, a team or a group of people, and
you can imagine ends up being people who are disenchanted
with the community, people who, in fact, I would say,
in some ways, people who had zero sort of appreciation
for the Haredi way of life, and perhaps yeah, would
would like to see it destroyed in some kind of way.

(07:16):
You know, I'm not trying to stay in like the
most physical way, and I found myself sort of being
in that corner with these kinds of allies, you know,
among the grassroots activist kind of people, and this kind
of mentality guided my work for many years. And as
you know, you know, we made some progress on the

(07:38):
battle front, and then these she was pushed back quite
successfully to this, you know, until this point. Still, but
over time, you know, I lost interest in it, and
I actually became quite you know, regretful about some of
the work that I've done. And now I've completely moved
away from it. But as I mentioned, both people inside
the community people outside the community, they still sort of

(07:59):
connect me to this issue. They still think of me
as being even to this day, like I still get
messages from people in the community thinking that I'm behind
some sort of expose or behind some sort of effort,
And I figured, like this, I figured I wanted to
make it official, to announce to the world that I'm
I've moved on in more ways than one, more than

(08:22):
one way, you know, in part also because while I
was doing the work, I felt like I was it
was hurting my family. I don't just mean my own family.
That was obviously it was a contentious kind of work,
but I also mean like my siblings, you know, my parents,
they're my siblings kids.

Speaker 3 (08:39):
And you know, of course, while I was.

Speaker 1 (08:42):
You know, doing the work, I could always justify and say, look,
I'm not hurting you, I'm just doing advocacy. And you
live in an oppressive community. So the backlash, you know,
it's the community's fault, it's not my fault. But ultimately,
you know, it was the work that I was doing.
If I've weren't doing the work, they would be you know,

(09:03):
be random people in the community, maybe respected people in
the community. And so ultimately, you know, especially now that
I'm no longer involved that figured might as well come
out and say it, you know, announce it to the world,
so to speak. So that's essentially a big part of
why I wanted to come on here and talk.

Speaker 2 (09:22):
When when you say that your work hurt people, you
want to expand on the ways in which like a
lot of people will not know exactly what your work
was and why it was controversial. Can you unpatch that
and also why it hurt your family? Not only did
it was controversial, but why, for instance, your family would
be hurt because you're doing advocacy y like put the

(09:44):
pieces together.

Speaker 1 (09:45):
Yeah, it's a good question. It's a good question. So
the work I was doing was raising awareness and fighting
to improve the secular education haadishibus.

Speaker 3 (09:56):
In theory.

Speaker 1 (09:57):
I still stand by that goal. I feel like it's
there's no downside in improving the secular education the Haaradi community.
I really would like for that, would like to see
that happen. But I do appreciate that we didn't go
about it the best way. So we were you know,
it was a big PR effort, you know, I mean
it wasn't intentional, Like for many years, I didn't even

(10:18):
know the word PR. I just was sort of getting
the word out because the LOGICU was as follows that
if I can't get the community leaders themselves to agree
to change, then how do we get enough pressure from
the outside to get them to accept this kind of change? Right?
So how do we generate pressure from the outside. Of course,
you want government enforcement, right, especially because the law already

(10:41):
required non public schools to provide a basic education, and
the idea was, well, how do we just get them
to enforce the law. Well, one way to get them
to enforce the law is by generating enough sort of
anger amongst the general public to be like, wow, there's
a law, it's not being enforced and it's having an

(11:02):
impact on all these different communities. Then you know, why
don't you enforce the law? So that was sort of
like where the whole media effort came about. And of
course we worked on policy and grassroots organizing. We had
a lot of legal avenues as well that we were pursuing.

Speaker 3 (11:18):
So that's what the work was.

Speaker 1 (11:21):
Now. The community leaders, of course didn't like it, and
because they wanted to preserve the status quo, and as
I'll go on to say later, like I actually understand
them to some degree, something that I wasn't able to
sort of acknowledge and admit at the time that preservation
of the community has a lot of value. And I

(11:44):
don't agree necessarily that you must preserve the exact status
quo when it comes to education to preserve the community.

Speaker 3 (11:50):
But I can see.

Speaker 1 (11:52):
Where their minds were. So it sort of became this
thing that you know, and a filly Moster was considered
like the the humm on of our generation, right, And
you can just imagine such a tight knit community, especially
since Moster is not such a common name, and see
this community, at least not yet. You know, I have
a lot of siblings, and they have a lot many siblings.

(12:14):
I have sixteen siblings in addition to myself and probably
eighty ninety nephews and nieces. So in the coming years,
Moster is going to become a very common name, hopefully,
but it wasn't such a common name. So when people
heard the name Moster or I'm just going to imagine,
I don't know this example, but I'm going to imagine
if my brother wants to do a deal. Okay, it

(12:36):
reaches out to a business, a potential business partner, and
they're like, I don't know X, this, this, and this
Moster right, and they're like, oh, are you related to
that Moster? Oh, well, he's out there, you know, criticizing
the community. How do I know you're not on the
same page as him, you know what I mean? So,
like I'm giving an example of how that could have
potentially hurt family members, as you know, the way should

(13:00):
from work versus the matches in the arranged marriage system,
where you know it can hurt you know, again, a
similar thing, you know, they try to arrange a said
that on the hair Moster, They're like, how much are
you aligned? And it's sort of seen as a blemish
on the family. So those are some of the examples
in which it could have hurt, you know, members of

(13:22):
my family, and I feel for them, I really do.
You know. Again, for a long time, I felt like, well,
there's a bigger picture here, tens of thousands of kids
of being denied in education. I get that you don't
want to speak out and that maybe it's it's sort
of you're feeling some of the backlash, but this is
still an important cause.

Speaker 2 (13:39):
You know, you know, I just want to put it
on the record, Like where I came from, going back
to fifteen years ago, which I had my own strong feelings.
I think in the end of the day we both
felt very strongly and we were both ready to put
ourselves on the line for our perspectives. My view, of course,
I was in agreement with you, and I think everyone,
including in the communities, in agreement, and that more secular

(14:01):
education or better secular education when there is for that
one hour or two hours, would be a good thing.
My view was very strongly that this is a very
raw nerve that the moment you approach it with like
a hamphisted way, you're activating like a historical memory of oh,
they're coming again for our way of life, and that

(14:23):
they'd close ranks and you'd potentially close the opportunity for
organic change that is naturally happening. And by the way,
for a very long time, I was very heavily criticized
by everyone, including close friends, for viewing it this way.
That's how I felt it, and I think my view
was often informed by kind of being in the neighborhood.

(14:46):
I don't know, I just I have a very strong
sense of the communities neat like it's tender spots where
if you push it's like you've activated that historical memory. Also, no, Tally,
I've never wanted from you, by the way, to do
any kind of meat cult, but just to put it

(15:07):
on the record, I'm interested in understanding your journey. I
you know, we've had discussions, We've have we've had civil
discussions about our disagreements, and my view was always very
strongly that the change has to come from within, and
the pushing from outside, especially with the antagonizing outsiders, is

(15:28):
going to create a bigger, bigger resistance that can possibly
counteract what it does. And and a lot of people
were angry at me for for that position, because yeah.

Speaker 1 (15:41):
Of course myself included I didn't I didn't appreciate that
someone who themselves sort of left the community was essentially
giving cover to the Karaiti leadership position. But again I
think I think you were you were right certainly to
a degree, and that yeah, you know, back then, early

(16:03):
on in the process, there were some Haaradi mahers or
leaders who would like speak to me and they'd say,
you know, you're right, there has to be changed, but
it has to come from within, and not only that,
it's actually already happening. And I'm afraid you're going to
undermine it. And at the time I was like, nah,
I was dismissing it. No, it wasn't change, isn't really happening,
or it's not coming fast enough.

Speaker 3 (16:23):
But the truth is, I think it was.

Speaker 1 (16:24):
In fact, as both you and I know, the Pacific
community and the Faradi community more broadly has undergone significant
change in the last decade plus. Perhaps some of it
is credit to people like myself, but some of it
is completely unrelated. And you can argue that on the
issue of education, it's been more of a stalemate, right,

(16:46):
and that perhaps it was because of the whole circling
the wagon that was happening as a result of our work.
So I totally agree that there's something there, and you know,
in hindsight, yeah, And as I'll tell you more a
little bit over this interview, what sort of led me

(17:07):
to get that sort of perspective now that I you know,
that sort of gets me to realize that, yeah, there.

Speaker 3 (17:14):
Could have been another way, and maybe there still is.

Speaker 2 (17:17):
What made you leave Yafford good question.

Speaker 1 (17:19):
One of the biggest things is because it was so contentious,
I did not want to continue doing it as my
kid was growing up, and you know, it's it's ugly
the things that were being said about me and the press.
I'm talking about the already press, and of course just
in general. It's the kind of work that your heart
great is always super high. I mean I was relative

(17:43):
to other people, I was managing it quite well. I think,
as you know, I was usually trying to bring some
joy fun to it, sometimes even you know, getting criticism
for it because people felt like, oh, you're you're enjoying it,
like you know, but I'm It's like to me, it
was more like I had to bring certain lightness set

(18:03):
it because otherwise it was very, very stressful.

Speaker 3 (18:06):
So that was one thing.

Speaker 1 (18:07):
I didn't want my son to grow up in that
kind of tense environment. But also the truth is that
I didn't like that we had sort of pushed ourselves
in this corner where we were so closely aligned with
people who were sort of on the far left. There
was this sort of understanding because we didn't have communal
leadership support, so we were looking to sort of latch

(18:28):
onto people who have some type of power right to
influence government and so forth.

Speaker 3 (18:33):
So who was it?

Speaker 1 (18:34):
It was like people who were like on the sort
of far left side of the political spectrum, and they
have this concept which I'm sure you've heard. It's called intersectionality,
which is we'll support to you if you support us.
I mean, it goes a little bit further, which it
claims like all the different oppressions are connected, but the
idea really is we'll rub your back if you rub

(18:57):
bars or whatever, scratch your back or whatever. And it's like,
so we have to support things like bail reform or
giving licenses to undocumented immigrants so that they would then
support secular education for Yeshivas. And even while I was
at Yafed, I really tried to stay away from it,
you know, but there was that sort of expectation and

(19:18):
frankly I just wasn't on board.

Speaker 3 (19:20):
I just wasn't on board.

Speaker 1 (19:21):
And it irked me all along where it's like, do
you support kids getting a secular education, then support my
mission and don't demand in return that I support things
that are a little bit far out there when it
comes to policy.

Speaker 3 (19:34):
So, you know, and there were.

Speaker 1 (19:35):
Times where I could actually see this kind of alignment
like literally hurting the cause. There was an example there
was this crady lawyer, I think it was Litfish and
he used to forward to meet all his emails that
he sends to a good of Israel, very well written,
legalistic and all that, where he was criticizing their position
and supporting our position for basic secular education. Right, so

(19:58):
he was clearly shown support. But every so often he'd
send me an email and be like, did you really
have to align yourself with this and this group? I
don't want to name names, but like, you know, people
on the far left, like where he saw us at
a press conference or he saw them at our press conference,
and I was like, I really wish I didn't.

Speaker 3 (20:14):
And to this day, I don't.

Speaker 1 (20:14):
Know the answer, because yeah, because again at the time,
we were completely powerless, you know. And I think the
answer is that we should have tried much much harder
to cultivate people from within, and that would have taken
a lot more sacrifice on my behalf. I would have
had to bury some of my anger and you know,
and just just work with some of these people, even

(20:36):
after they sort of pushed me off a few times.

Speaker 3 (20:39):
But it's still a big question.

Speaker 1 (20:41):
Mark.

Speaker 2 (20:42):
Wow, that's very interesting, the issue of needing to have
strange bedfellows in order to be effective, needing to align
yourself with people that maybe you find unsavory, or you
just don't feel at all sympathetic to their cause or
passionate about their cause. You just want your own cause.
I think it's something that people who do niche causes
relate to and find themselves with that dilemma, and yeah,

(21:06):
it can. It can really wear you down because you
end up feeling like, why am I with all of
these people? We don't even agree. Yeah, it's just this
one issue that brings us together. And a lot of
these spaces not to get sidetracked in politics, but in
my experience, a lovely spaces can also become very almost
like censorship based what you can say. You have to

(21:28):
be on board with every whatever trendy cause, and that
can be for us with our baggage can be especially difficult.
We've come all this way to be able to say
some things.

Speaker 1 (21:42):
So true, so true, I'll tell you, I'll tell you
even more because this sort of like evolution continued, it's
sort of I think the most important event was when
my son was about three and a half years old,
and I think by then we had a daughter, but
she was like a baby, and the question of where
we're going to send him to school became a reality.
Until then, he was going to this like conservative Jewish daycare,

(22:06):
almost anyone, almost everyone in that daycare. After that year,
the kids went on to public school, So we have
that question because they didn't have it didn't continue, and
we had the question, what do we do now? Where
do we send him? And it was like the first
time it really hit me. This was no longer a hypothetical. Oh,
kids should get an education and this and this education.
Suddenly I'm like, Okay, my kid, where am I sending him?

(22:30):
And we pretty quickly realized that there's no way we're
sending him to a public school. Like we were living
in East Ramapoe at the time, so obviously not East
Rama Poe, but even any other public school. You know.
One of the reasons is because even though he was
just receiving most of his education at home, but we
could see that he was getting so much joy from
his learning, his Jewish education, his Jewish roots, Jewish tradition,

(22:52):
Jewish knowledge, and we would have wanted to deprive him
of that. But also we wanted him to be able
to relate and have a relationship with his cousins. You know,
we have Litfish cousins on my wife's side, Facidish cousins
on my side.

Speaker 2 (23:03):
And can you briefly talk about your marriage or just
so we have a sense of where you two are
and the Yeah.

Speaker 1 (23:11):
So you know, my wife comes from the Litwish community,
which is ultra orthodox of Haredi but not Fasidic, and
I come from the Facidic community.

Speaker 2 (23:20):
How did you meet?

Speaker 3 (23:22):
It's a digression.

Speaker 2 (23:23):
Okay, well we'll go there.

Speaker 1 (23:25):
It's not a secret, but it's just I feel like
it would it could end up being a digression. But yes,
we met, you know, and it was like it would
it would be considered a mixed marriage within the Haredi world, right,
but you know.

Speaker 3 (23:37):
For us, it worked really well. So that was the
sort of.

Speaker 1 (23:40):
The dynamic that we were working with. But it became
clear that we also wouldn't send him that one of
the main reasons, to speak bluntly, not to send him
to a public school is frankly, because most public schools
their education is subpar. Right. So you know, my wife,
who's Miriam, who's an academic and very smart. She put
together this like handwritten spreadsheet. Okay, it was on a

(24:04):
huge post it note in our kitchen. We were living
in Rockland at the time. And on the one side
it had these the types of all kinds of different schools,
and on the other end it had different criteria or
qualities that people think about where they think about school.
So to paint it to you, and I'm sure we
have a picture of it somewhere, because I think I

(24:25):
took one. But so you had the spectrum of schools
on one axis, so you had everything from Harassidish schools
to public schools, and you know, so you had Ratidish,
Littfish modern Orthodox conservative reform and then public school. On
the other access you had things like Jewish education, secular education,
you know, screen and video time, which we didn't want,

(24:47):
social connection, the cost of course, and very importantly also
demographic trajectory, okay, in other words, we wanted a place
where he wouldn't find himself homeless in a decade or two,
which kind of precluded the conservative schools because their trajectory
is declining. Okay, So obviously we didn't want him to
go to the Hasidish school because I felt very strongly

(25:09):
they're not getting a basic secular education. And frankly, he
didn't speak Eilish.

Speaker 2 (25:13):
Right, so it's not even an option.

Speaker 1 (25:15):
Yeah, but we quickly realized we also didn't want him
to go to a public school where he wouldn't get
a Jewish education, where the quality is not so great.
So eventually we sort of through this process we landed
on the Modern Orthodox School. But first we during this process,
we also went to see some of the schools. We
went to visit some schools. Initially we were going to
go to the conservative route. They failed on the demographic

(25:36):
trajectory question, of course, but also and this is worse,
you know, when we inquired and we visited some of
these schools, out of nowhere, several people were like telling
us as a positive attribute of this school, They're like, oh,
they're so great they welcome trans kids into this schools.
And we were like a little bit like shocked by

(25:57):
it because think about it, my kid is I didn't
ask anyone about trans We're talking about an elementary school. Okay,
he was daycare age. Why is this word even coming
up in the conversation, you know, So to some of
these people like this idea that there was this assumption
that if I am out there supporting secular education for

(26:21):
Hasidic kids. I must also be on on the bandwagon.
I must also be on board with encouraging trans content
and so such in the schools. It was a big
turn off, you know. And I know people try to
downplay this hole that there was an obsession amongst the
left with trans right, especially leading up to the twenty

(26:43):
twenty four election. But I've experienced a first hint. You know,
my son during COVID so before that, he actually went
to a non Jewish outdoor school that had a farm,
and they prided themselves on not reading to the kids.
It's all outdoors. There's a lot of climbing, this building,
this hiking. They did a lot of hiking and of
course playing with the animals or something, so it's all

(27:06):
in nature. So my son, even though he was only
three and a half, he was a very good reader,
very advanced, and that's really the only thing he enjoyed doing.
We had to push him out of his comfort zone
to go to this school and basically try some other
things that a good boy should do. One day, so
remember they didn't read any books on principal. One day

(27:26):
he came home he told us that his teachers did
read them a book, and it was a book about
a boy who wore jewelry, you know, and all that stuff.
And then he shared that they also discussed how one
rooster on the farm became a hen or vice versa.

Speaker 2 (27:41):
Don't is that possible?

Speaker 3 (27:44):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (27:45):
I don't know, but I was furious, Like, it's one thing.
If you read books every single day and one out
of a hundred books is about a trans kid or whatever.
For most kids, it would be like the fantasy books
they read, you know, the sky is falling or pep
Up Pig or whatever. It's like, okay, yeah, there's this
kid who who's But if you don't read on principle
and then the one time you read it has to

(28:06):
be about you know, a trans kid, it's like, yeah,
we we have a real problem, Sameway.

Speaker 3 (28:11):
So ultimately we enrolled him in the Modern Orthodox.

Speaker 1 (28:14):
School, where we felt he'd be getting the best of
both worlds, you know, a great Jewish education, a great
secular education, and the community here is on a you know,
on a good trajectory. There's a big, you know, a
boom in terms of kids, but also a huge, a huge,
you know, important component was the social aspect of it.

(28:38):
To Again, my wife was very strong and had a good,
good vision about this that one of the things that
she missed most from growing up was the social aspect
of it. So Shabas afternoon in particular, Right, what does
it look like in the in the Haredi world, you know, no,
no technology. Frankly, many of these families don't have technology

(28:59):
even throughout the week. But on Shabas in particular, you
just cross the street, you go to your neighbor's house,
you knock on the door, you invite yourself in, or
they come to your house. Right, And there's something so
nice about that, right that the secular world lacks. Right,
there's like the loneliness epidemic. Here you have a community
and strong social ties and social connection and people caring

(29:22):
for one another. You know, it's not like just to
go fund me. There's like a continuous you know, care
for one another until that point. Like when my son
wasn't this conservative days daycare, we would have to plan
weeks in advance just to have a playdate with now
I know, or like when we invited, when we invited finally,
when we had a play date, we invited a family

(29:43):
on Shabis for we said it was like for Shabas lunch.
They'd come to the house and they'd be like a
little bit dumbfounded by the fact that there's a whole
meal prepared, like, you know, they thought it was just
a regular playdate. To them, it's just a regular weekdate.
So to us, this was very important and we wanted
to full immerse in this world.

Speaker 3 (30:01):
So it was pretty abrupt. We picked ourselves up.

Speaker 1 (30:04):
We moved to this town in New Jersey, right in
the middle of this modern Orthodox community. My son, my
son was already enrolled in that school and was attending it.

Speaker 3 (30:14):
And and that's it, you know, on.

Speaker 1 (30:16):
Shavis, I grabbed my talus.

Speaker 3 (30:18):
Went to the shool, and that's it. You know, we
sort of never looked back.

Speaker 2 (30:23):
What was your religious journey from Bells to here? Were
you religious all through?

Speaker 1 (30:30):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (30:31):
Anything? There's no judgment, by the way.

Speaker 1 (30:33):
No, I know, well there's definitely no judgment on your
part of course.

Speaker 2 (30:36):
Uh yeah, the viewer. Okay, I'm just but from my question,
I don't.

Speaker 3 (30:40):
Have to you know, I don't have to sugarcoat it.

Speaker 1 (30:42):
There were there was a period where you know, I
had left the Haredi fold, which included left the Haredi observance,
and yeah, we sort of we largely lived, you know,
secular slash conservative Jewish lifestyle, you know, so yes, we
tried to always hold on to some Shobist traditions, but

(31:05):
not everything, you know, So this was it was interesting
because I'll tell you one of the things that gave
me that kind of ability. I told my wife, if
you make the decision that we're moving to a modern
Orthodox community and we're immersing in this with the kids
in the school and us, I said, just let me
know and I'll do it because I've done it once

(31:27):
and I could do it again, you know. So that strength,
when you know, having gone through that transition out of
the Haradi world, which was, as I'm sure you know,
extremely extremely difficult, that also gave us that strength to
sort of do it again and for the.

Speaker 3 (31:44):
Benefit of the kids.

Speaker 1 (31:45):
You know. It's not going to say that we're not
appreciating it. To the contrary, it's been the best decision
we've made. But the guiding thing was the kids.

Speaker 2 (31:55):
It's very interesting. There's so much to be said. I've
always been very interested in in which a communal education works.
I talk about it a lot on my tours. Besides
for what happens in a classroom, what happens in a community,
to raise children, to educate children, and there were there
were really nice things to be able to raise my

(32:15):
son secular, and there were also a lot of ways
in which I experienced a profound loss that came from
leaving the community. Like it felt like you gained some,
you win some, but a lot of the losses is
like you said, the showbus culture, the going over to
the neighbors, everyone kind of living in mesh. Like to me,

(32:41):
it often felt like modern Orthodoxy is like some kind
of upper middle class or middle class life that you
have to be almost privileged to be in, and you
have to be married and probably multiple children. But it
tries to straddle some of the of both world. And

(33:01):
to continue to digress, since I've already digressed, and then
we're going to get back on topic. I was just
listening to a podcast with Gnomi Seideman, who you might
know where she's experts Pasidic and she always says like
modern Orthodoxy doesn't feel like the real deal. Do you
have a comment on that?

Speaker 3 (33:20):
I have so much to comment on it.

Speaker 1 (33:22):
I think it's a big mistake. Again, I'm in this
mode of self reflection. So maybe I'm a little too
harsh on myself. Some people say I have a midlife crisis,
but one of the I used to feel the same way.
I used to like practically mock this idea of you
could leave the Haaradi community and become modern Orthodox. I'm like,

(33:44):
are you crazy you left the Haaradi community? Especially if
you left because you don't believe in certain things, you know,
whether it's God or the toro or whatever. It's like, oh,
but you're going to become out an Orthodox. I mean,
it's just it's the logical conclusion is that you become
an atheist and you're completely disassociated with any form of religion.
And of course at this point I am the farthest

(34:07):
from that position, and I.

Speaker 3 (34:10):
Almost like I almost want to get into how do.

Speaker 1 (34:14):
You say it, even evangelizing evangelizing you know on this
that you know, look, I've spoken to people who tried
to integrate into the modern Orthodox world. It's some of
the things you said earlier are true. It's very hard
to do it with a low income or with no
sort of support. It could be a little clique, you know, sometimes,

(34:34):
especially when you're trying to sort of break into a
group of people who know them, who know each other
from the schools they've gone to, the shools, they've attended,
the camps they went to. They have a lot in common.
And by the way, not to dismiss also some of
the more nuanced things, like they know certain cultural things
that we just don't know. I'll give you an example,
like I was once in this little group of a

(34:56):
little shool and people were talking about going to this
concert shaba is of like some a secular singer, which
is not uncommon in this community. But everyone knew.

Speaker 3 (35:07):
Who that singer was. I didn't, you know, so I
don't remember. I don't remember what it was.

Speaker 1 (35:13):
If I knew it would it would come to stay
in my memory. But it's like these things you know
where and by the way, we're talking sixteen years after
leaving the Pacific world, Like, but you can never make
up for it, you know. I'm sure you've had this
where people would tell you, Frieda, you must watch this
movie because you missed that I as a kid, you
should watch it now. And I'm like, I need to

(35:34):
catch up on so many movies or other things that
I didn't do as a kid. While also living my
life currently and taking all the new information that we're getting,
all the current movies that are becoming you know, you know,
major things class to watch, Yes, the classics. So so
that's the thing, you know. So there there's some truth
to it. But at the same time, at the same time,

(35:55):
once you get past this sort of like rigid idea
ideological position of like if I don't believe in X
y Z, how can I do this? It's it's actually
a pretty good place when you take into account the
fact that you grew up Jewish, you're proud to be Jewish,
you want your kids to be Jewish, and you want
a community, you want a sense of belonging, you want

(36:19):
your kids to get a good education and instill good values. Frankly,
it's not a bad choice at all. So I'm happy
to speak to others you know, who've left the Haredi
world and are contemplating it. I think it's not a
bad choice.

Speaker 2 (36:33):
Maybe it's your next activist project.

Speaker 1 (36:36):
Hey, maybe we'll talk later about my next chapter.

Speaker 2 (36:40):
Yeah, well, I'm not done with your religious journey. I
just have one more question, if you're comfortable speaking to it.
Does God play a role in your life?

Speaker 1 (36:49):
It's a good question. I don't know, probably not in
the traditional sense, which, by the way, as you and
I know, in the Hasidish world. Let me turn this
to you. What percentage of Harasidam do you think believe
in God as described you know, in the kind I
don't know.

Speaker 2 (37:08):
I have no idea, Come one, you should know the percentage.
I can give you.

Speaker 1 (37:14):
No approximate based on your conversations or based on what
other people tell you, Like how many times I Hasidim
told me like ninety percent of the community doesn't believe.
You know, I'm giving it, and that's maybe an exaggeration.
I'm sure it's like probably sixty percent or seventy percent.
I don't know. But the point is that there's so
much more to it. You know, you could think of

(37:34):
this sort of God and the rules as simply something
that helps guide or heard of. You know, we're all animals, right,
and you know you could see in the animal kingdom
like people, I mean not people, animals, like they live
in communities of some sort, they follow certain rituals and

(37:55):
rules and whatever. Most of it is just for survival, right,
It's evolutionary instincts, and religion does a lot of that
really really well while packaging it in a religious package.
But ultimately I find it actually ironic that the religious
world is more tapped into our evolutionary needs than is

(38:19):
the secular world. Take for example, like the question of
community and loneliness. In the secular world, they really believe
that they can substitute all of that with a tablet.
I don't know if they believe in it or they've
sort of succumbed to it, just given up. And the
religious world held on so tightly and fought back. Like
I don't know about you, but I was of course

(38:40):
laughing at this, the bands on smartphones and all kinds
of things. But whether they knew it or not, it
was the right thing to do, you know what I mean,
You know, going around and seeing kids just buried their
face in technology, and there's something very unnatural does to

(39:00):
the mind and you know, to the behaviors that it's
causing so much harm in society. You know, someone actually
recently had a blog post about this, I think it
was called tas Tora something on this topic, and they stress,
like it's not to say that somehow the rabbis knew
what it's going to cause in a decade or two

(39:22):
or in one hundred years from now when they banned television.
But there's something there where they understood instinctively that we
must preserve our people, we must preserve our way of
life because there's something very natural about it. And that's
what And that's another thing that brings me, you know
that I feel like there's a disconnect between people like

(39:45):
myself and others in sort of activism where they have
no appreciation for the family unit, for the community, and
everything is up for discussion, everything can be disrupted and destroyed.
And here you have a community that there are so
many things that are working for them, so many things
that they're doing so well that the outside world is

(40:05):
envious about. And no, they don't want disruption, you know,
they don't want to destroy it. And I don't want
to be affiliated with aligned with people who who are
seeking to destroy the systems that are working really well.

Speaker 2 (40:21):
Yeah, you know, disruption for disruption's sake is kind of
a progressive ethos, like we have to break everything down.
It's like almost like an idol. And I get so
many comments on YouTube and on my other platforms where
people are like they live in the past, why are
they so crazy stuck in the past. I have always
believed that there's value to what has been tried and true.

(40:45):
Yes it looks old fashioned, sometimes taking putting a break
on the pace of change has its benefits, like, oh,
throw it all out. It's the twenty first century, and
there is a lot to re examine. It's also fair,
you know. But at the same time, there is a
value in looking in both directions to the past and

(41:08):
to the future. And I appreciate what you're saying. I
want to go back to your to your journey, which
obviously you've You've been on a long personal journey. When
I got to know you, I remember you were getting married,
you know. And now your kids are like obviously grade
school or whatever, their school age kids, and you have

(41:29):
two can we say.

Speaker 3 (41:30):
That, Yeah, we have.

Speaker 1 (41:32):
I have an eight year old almost eight, actually, no,
turned eight today, and then I have one that's turning
five next month.

Speaker 2 (41:41):
Very nice sweet, okay, super.

Speaker 1 (41:42):
Super sweet kids.

Speaker 2 (41:43):
Yes, I'm sure they're sweet kids there, but they're still
pretty little. Yeah. So you're now essentially in that like
raising family stage. So what what happened in the last
few years in your midlife crisis? I'm just using here
all your words.

Speaker 1 (42:01):
Yeah, so you know, a yeah, what's been your Right
Around the time that we sort of moved to New
Jersey and switched that kid into the modern Atrax school,
I also was leaving yaff and I mentioned to you
some of the motivation for it. I didn't feel comfortable
having to pander to some of these groups, and I
felt like, you know, maybe it's time to move on.

(42:24):
I would have done it differently at this point, but
let me just move on. But I still had an
appetite for sort of challenging the Haredi leadership. In fact,
you know, I think I wanted to take a little
bit of revenge almost in some way. I felt like
they succeeded in stymying yaffed because they all the institutions

(42:44):
and the leaders together conspired and worked in unison to
oppose us, and I felt like, through a media outlet,
you know, we could expose them and hold them accountable.
And I think some of it was unconscious and subconscious
at the time, but you know, I think it's increasingly
something I'm able to process and see where I was
really coming.

Speaker 3 (43:04):
But on paper, I made.

Speaker 1 (43:05):
A pretty good case for why the Haradi community needs
a free press, and basically I argue that, you know,
the Haradi world operates like a state within a state,
and unlike the rest of society, which you know, has
access to a free press.

Speaker 3 (43:19):
I mean, say what you will.

Speaker 1 (43:20):
Of course, different media outlets have different biases, but generally speaking,
they can report without fear of favor about different powerful
people holding power to account, so to speak.

Speaker 3 (43:32):
And in the Haradi world, that doesn't exist.

Speaker 1 (43:34):
Right. The media tends to be, you know, too integrated
in the Haradi world that the leaders have so much
power and control over the media. So it's not common
and it's not likely for a media outlet to actually
hold a leader of the community accountable, Like what are
they going to do? They're going to be like this rabbi,
you know, committed fraud, or this rabbi abuses power. Think

(43:56):
of how the New York Times reports about a congress
member or or mayor. Right, you know, you're not going
to have the Haredi papers do that about their own leaders,
who really wield a lot of sort of power and
control over their people.

Speaker 3 (44:09):
So the logic was that that's what.

Speaker 1 (44:10):
We're out to do. Right. We had some parameters about
like what makes something a stettle story, especially if it
involved investigation, It had to meet one of these criteria.
Had to be either about abuse of power by or
fraud by a sort of communal leader or similarly by
an institution. In other words, from the beginning, we knew
we didn't just want to go after random individuals in

(44:32):
the community.

Speaker 3 (44:33):
Oh this guy did this, Oh this guy did that.

Speaker 1 (44:35):
Right, Like, even when it comes to sex abuse, you know,
if there was a communal connection or an institutional connection,
then find we'd report on it. But otherwise, even from
the start, we weren't going to do that. And I
think all of this is still true. I'm actually a
big believer in the importance of a free press to
a democratic society.

Speaker 3 (44:55):
But there are a few things.

Speaker 1 (44:55):
First of all, I got turned off by how the
media operates in some way. I think, you know, there's
something very cold and context less about the way real
journalism is done. It doesn't have the same kind of
warmth and nuance about a certain issue. Again, it sort
of has this idea of like, I don't have to

(45:15):
care if this institution is going to fall apart just
because you know, I reported about something wrong they're doing right, and.

Speaker 3 (45:23):
It's like it's very cold, right.

Speaker 1 (45:25):
And I also got to see upclose how some of
the media works and how they steer their readers, their viewers,
their listeners, you know, into a certain place. So you know,
in other words, you know, the institution that's meant to
uphold democracy in some cases doesn't exactly do that. I
also felt like terrible that in some cases, even though yeah,
we were like aiming to report only on like people

(45:47):
in power, their people, and they have families, especially in
an insular community, and it hurts them, you know what
I mean.

Speaker 3 (45:53):
So I didn't like it.

Speaker 1 (45:55):
I also felt like it's ironic part of my you know,
as we were doing this reporting, you know, one of
the ways we would find a story is like I
would flip through the Haadi media, you know, magazines and
newspapers and essentially look for something juicy and and as
you know, there's always plenty there. But I would also
come across so many nice things in the community, you know,

(46:18):
whether it's certain goods and services or charities or even
even there's like a program that helps I don't remember,
I forgot what it's called, but it helps families whose
whose siblings or kids went OTD right.

Speaker 2 (46:33):
It's a bellz a thing, isn't it.

Speaker 1 (46:34):
I don't know. I know in Israel the bells are
Rebe is sort of known for this, but I didn't
know of this. I don't know who runs this organization
or who it's affiliated with. But you see these things,
you know, yes, there, I'm thinking, like, yes, there are
real issues in the community, and I really wish that
there's a good way to address these issues. But is
media exposure, you know, the best way you know to

(46:57):
go about it, especially when media itself sometimes misses the more.
I'll give you an example. You know, I was working
and I was actually following up on tips about hot
Sala allegedly doing this at that I'm not even going
to go into details, and meanwhile pays off. Last year
comes around and we're by my in laws and monthsye, okay,
we were already living here. We're by my in laws
of Mounsie. The morning of the first day, my son

(47:19):
he was six at the time, he always wakes up
very early, and you know, regardless of when he goes
to sleep, and he's like excited and he rushes up
to his grandmother's bedroom to wake her up to have
a read or something to him and he knocks into
his head, knocks into a sharp edged banister. Okay, and
we hear crying and such, and of course there was

(47:41):
blood dripping.

Speaker 3 (47:41):
It was like a trail.

Speaker 1 (47:43):
And yeah, and you know, first we jump out of bed,
we run and help, and after just a little deliberation,
I'm like, I'm calling at Sella.

Speaker 3 (47:51):
I call it Tella.

Speaker 1 (47:52):
Within minutes, probably less than three minutes, a guy shows up, okay,
in his personal vehicle. He's wearing nice jumped of pants.
You could see his shirt just like only half tucked in.
You could see on his eyes. He's tired like crazy,
probably because you went to sleep very late the night
before because of the sat Right a minute later, another
Hatsala guy shows up, and you know, they both come

(48:13):
in help selflessly. You know, by that point the bleeding
mostly stopped and basically they told us, with a little
bit about an ointment and a bandit, it's probably fine.
But again, I mean, I'm sure Hatsala, like almost every entity,
they could do better or occasionally make a mistake, But
does you know doing something that could potentially undermine the

(48:34):
invaluable service they provide, which is an envy to anyone
outside the.

Speaker 3 (48:38):
Haradi world, like what what does that do?

Speaker 1 (48:41):
Do? I want to be, you know, involved in it,
like you know, And I was turned off because there
were people surrounding me in my own orbit who was
who were very sort of militant about it, where It's
like to them if an institution made a mistake or whatever,
they wanted to tear it down. And I'm like, I'm
not on bored, I'm not on board. You know, we

(49:02):
were doing the story about you, remember Yankee Doscal he
was a former founder of Schamrim and members.

Speaker 2 (49:09):
Yeah, and his real.

Speaker 1 (49:12):
Right, yes, yes, of an underage girl that was in
his sort of custody, so to speak. But when we
did the story, I told my reporter, make sure you
put in why the community finds this useful, why the
community benefits from Chamrim? And you know what, I don't
know about you, but growing up in Barra Park, when
bar Park was not fully Hasidish, half of our block

(49:35):
was not Jewish and half a bar Park was not Jewish,
I got to tell you, Chamrim provided us a layer
of security that frankly, we didn't feel like we had.
You know, if we get beat up on the street
and you call it in and suddenly, from a bunch
of random local stores, Shamri members show up to help.
It gave such a sense of security and care that

(49:57):
we didn't otherwise feel, And I feel like that's important.

Speaker 2 (50:02):
You know, you know, you touch on such a dilemma
because this is a community that has its flaws. It
has plenty of its flaws, of course, and there are
some systemic, really big issues. Sometimes I'll get emails from
people who are in vulnerable places and tell their stories,
and they'll say to me, it's really nice that you

(50:23):
speak to the positive of the community, but you know,
you should know that I suffer with this and that,
and for me, I believe them, like I know that
this is not a perfect world. My work was never
about saying, oh, this is a utopia. Everyone should be
like them. I think some people will want to be
like them, some people will want to be like you,
some people want to be like me. I just always

(50:46):
like to explore the uniquenesses. But it feels like oftentimes
we're in this position where if we don't talk about
the negativity, if we don't talk about the issues that
are hidden under the rug, who else is going to
speak to it? And essentially you're complicit. That's that's sometimes
the burden that kind of I feel like is placed

(51:08):
on me in my work. How can you speak to
everyday life without exposing the ugly side? Because I have
no interest in hiding things. Yet at the same time,
there are so many people that are looking to focus
only on that. Chamaran is a good example. Chamam was
always a banal thing to us. It was a community
organization where we look after each other, coming from a

(51:29):
long history of feeling the need to organize this way.
But you talk to outsiders, they have their own police.
There's some conspiracy of like their own leader.

Speaker 1 (51:38):
Yes, is it that?

Speaker 2 (51:40):
It was never that to me? What is it? A
Dantel's story.

Speaker 3 (51:44):
Does see how people see it? I can see how
people on the outside see it.

Speaker 1 (51:48):
But at the same time, it's like you said, everything
could be seen in the negative light or in the
positive light, and the reality is there's a lot of
a lot of positive you know. I want to tell
you another story. I was We did a story about
Judge Rookie Fryar. I'm sure you know of her.

Speaker 2 (52:07):
Okay, yeah, let's tell everyone who she is.

Speaker 3 (52:09):
I'll get to that.

Speaker 1 (52:10):
It was mainly just like a positive story about how
she was nominated from like a local district judge to
being the Supreme Court judge now being the Supreme Court
judge in New York States. It's a state level it
actually the Supreme Court is one of the lower level courts,
but it's bigger than you know, the local district court
that she was on. So it was a nice positive

(52:30):
story just about that that she that she was nominated
to become the judge. So we did that story, and
I get a call from an activist literally, I kid you,
not screaming at the top of his lungs okay, that
we did a puff piece about a person you know
he perceives as well. Okay, And here you have someone
like Rookie Fryar, who she helped people who've left the community.

(52:54):
She found it Ezras Nusham, which is like a female
led version of Utsala.

Speaker 2 (52:58):
Of the Ems.

Speaker 1 (53:00):
Yes, and in her spare time, she became a lawyer
and then a judge, in addition to raising what seems
like a nice family and like.

Speaker 2 (53:07):
Nine children or something, I don't know how many a lot, and.

Speaker 1 (53:11):
God forbid, we did a story about about her, and
you know, it's just like, I don't know if you're
interested in hearing some other stories, but like I have like.

Speaker 2 (53:21):
Wait, wait, wait to clarify their problem with you covering
Rophy Fryer was as an OTD person, as an outsider activist.

Speaker 1 (53:29):
Well person presented as more insider, but yeah, was definitely
wanted to wanted to dig like they can't be a
good person, she can't. They had some complaint that she
was I think that she was against abortion. Okay, yes,
it's a valid position, you know, and I don't have
to we don't have to have a hit piece or
whatever just because of that. You know, we once did

(53:51):
a story about a person who filed a lawsuits, you know,
someone who alleged that they were abused as a child
in a local yeshiva a lot. It was public. It
was a civil case, so not like a criminal charge.
It was from monetary damages. Both the plaintiff and the
defendant were named in the lawsuit because you know, I
don't know if you know this such thing. You could
file an anonymous lawsuit it's called a John Doe or
Jane Doe. But this was public. The person was now

(54:14):
something like thirty one or thirty three. So this is
the allegation was that it happened many, many years ago,
twenty something years ago.

Speaker 3 (54:20):
So we did our due diligence.

Speaker 1 (54:21):
We reached out to both parties, including the plaintiff's lawyer
of course the defendant, you know, and nobody got back
to us by publication or something like that.

Speaker 3 (54:29):
So we did. We reported the story.

Speaker 1 (54:30):
Okay, person A accuses person B and person B taught once
taught at this in this school or something like that.
After the you know, after the story, you know, I mean,
as journalists, I felt like, you know, we can't take
a can't take a position. We have to be neutral
about it. Right if the allegation, it's an allegation that
goes back decades, you know, so from our perspective, from

(54:53):
an accountability perspective, like both the plaintiff and the defendant
should be named, especially since they're named in the lawsuit.
So anyways, after publication, the alleged victim reaches out and
says that he wants his name out. So we frantically
consulted experts, and based on what we heard back, we
decided that the story is published. We're leaving it as is.

(55:13):
We did a due diligence. The lawsuit is public, it's fine.
So these activists, you know, who were fighting sex abuse
in the community, it seems like they were coordinating with
a victim. They suddenly mounted this massive pressure campaign on
us to remove it, and they essentially wanted us to
submit to their made up rules like quote unquote, you
never name a victim. And again notice that they say victim,

(55:37):
there's never alleged victim, and it's always abuser.

Speaker 3 (55:39):
There's never alleged abuser.

Speaker 1 (55:41):
Okay, this has not been adjudicated in court. The guy,
it's the first lawsuit. This is an alleged abuser and
an alleged victim.

Speaker 3 (55:50):
You know.

Speaker 1 (55:51):
And I just realized, and of course they love the
connection to the school. Oh, he's part of the school,
and that's always you know. And I realized that there
are people who have I have no qualms about, you know,
destroying a person's life, destroying the institutions they're affiliated, and
if someone doesn't submit to their idea of their purity
or whatever on reporting on it, they're willing to destroy

(56:12):
them as well. And all this crystallized something in my mind,
which is that even though I personally have always insisted
on merely improving a little secular education the Haaridi yeshivas.
There were plenty of people in my orbit who I
can say they probably were totally okay with the community,
you know, with the yeshivas being destroyed and going under

(56:34):
and being shut down.

Speaker 3 (56:36):
And I don't want that.

Speaker 1 (56:38):
You know, Like when I walk in the streets of
bar Park, and I'm not saying I always had this view,
but when I do now, I see so much good.

Speaker 3 (56:47):
You know. I was recently there actually with a journalist.

Speaker 1 (56:49):
He reached out to me, and again he thought I'm
still involved, and he reached out and I happened to
be in bar Park. I was like, fine, we'll meet.
And you know, I'm walking around the street. You see
these kids sort of in the evening. It was in
the winter months, so it was early evening, and they're
walking around holding books and they're peering into storefront windows

(57:10):
of bookstores. It's like, this is beautiful, this is what
you want. Do I agree with everything they're reading? Do
I agree that they're not also reading some you know,
they're not also learning some secular education. No, I really
do wish that there was some improvement over there. But
this is beautiful and it's undeniable, and so to me
it just felt like I want to move on from this.

(57:32):
You know, if I could be helpful and sort of
spotlighting the good and perhaps if there's some way to
help bring change from within, great, But if not not,
like I can understand that I may not be that person.
I have to move on, do something else and hope
that other people in the community can actually bring change.

Speaker 2 (57:50):
Yeah. You know, for some of us, we have a
certain amount of distance that allows us with time to
appreciate things that when you're in it, you're hurting because
of you know, if one thing is hurting you in
the community, if five things are hurting you, then all
the other things become null and void, and the distance

(58:12):
and release from the pain allows you to see it differently,
and then you feel like the fire in your soul
that's driving whatever activism dissipates. So, you know, I have
a very short term anger usually like I feel very
strongly about something and then it dissipates. And then how
are you supposed to keep going once you don't feel
passionate about it? You know, you stop feeling that pain.

(58:35):
Do you feel on a personal level, I want to
wrap up the interview, But I just want to ask
you on a personal level, do you feel like this
whole process that you've just described has been healing or
freeing or or is it tormenting, regret inducing, like what's
been the personal emotional journey.

Speaker 1 (58:54):
It's an interesting question. It's a little bit of everything.
I don't it's not sort of hounding me a way
where it's like, you know, hurting me mentally or psychologically
or anything like that.

Speaker 3 (59:05):
I think I'm a pretty healthy person the way I'm
able to.

Speaker 1 (59:08):
Sort of process it and hold it all and be
able to both go on with my life try to
make adjustments where needed. So I've been able to sort
of manage it well. But it's not to say that
there isn't like a storm happening, you know, in my head.
Obviously it's a big it's a big change, you know,
to sort of go from being like no, they can

(59:29):
do no, they can do nothing right to being like, actually, no, no,
there's there's a lot they could do right. And by
the way, that also means that I'm like, you know, essentially,
you know, I don't have a strong footing on what
I'm doing next as well, like I have some ideas brewing,
but it's it could be destabilizing.

Speaker 3 (59:47):
But you know, I'm okay with managing a bunch of things.

Speaker 1 (59:51):
I guess my years at Yafed did prepare me for
being able to handle a tremendous amount of stress. But
it's definitely I think there's definitely some freeing. You know,
it's definitely liberating and freeing first of all, not to
be beholden to people who want you to sort of
feel a certain way or want you to go after

(01:00:11):
people in a certain way, but also to be like,
you know, this the mission says lo Ale Ligmoor or
something like that, you know, like it doesn't have to
be me, you know, like I for many years I insisted, no, no, no,
I have to like I was crowned by God or whatever,
like I have to this is my mission. Yeah, and

(01:00:32):
it's like, no, no, it doesn't have to be you know,
if if I could be helpful, I'll be helpful.

Speaker 3 (01:00:37):
If not, that's okay too.

Speaker 1 (01:00:39):
You know. I want to have like a nice life,
you know, in this community and with my kids, and
and it's amazing. I just I just love it, you know,
being a parent. And I think that's a big part
that we didn't get to and maybe for a different
time about how being a parent changes people. It's sort

(01:00:59):
of of ignites this need to protect and to provide
and to and it changes your outlook a lot. And
I think that a lot of people who are more
eager to sort of destroy things, it's because they don't
have that instinct. You'll notice that a lot of people
who very like sort of fanatical streamist. Yes, exactly, there's

(01:01:22):
no value in an institution or in a system when
you don't have your own future, you know, at stake.

Speaker 2 (01:01:29):
What about STETL You're not You're you're rethinking that.

Speaker 3 (01:01:34):
Of course, yes, as far as I'm concerned.

Speaker 1 (01:01:37):
I mean, you could see we haven't published anything. Well,
we publish one item on what's her name? I forgot
the singer, you know, I'm sure you've had her before,
Ricky Rose. Oh really give us a nice, sweet story.

Speaker 3 (01:01:50):
And if I could do that, that would be great.

Speaker 1 (01:01:54):
You know, I was thinking maybe Stetel could become like
a hub for you know, content creators. I mentioned to
you before our interview about like possibly turning it into
like just an archive. No editorializing, no criticizing, no investigating,
just just Yiddish archiving Yiddish content things like that or not. Yeah,

(01:02:15):
I'm okay with if shuttle, you know, shuts down. I
don't have to do that. It would be great if
I can keep it going and if I can do
something productive and helpful.

Speaker 3 (01:02:25):
But if not, that's okay.

Speaker 2 (01:02:26):
Would you consider becoming a lawyer since you have that,
you have that experience with a stress in.

Speaker 1 (01:02:34):
Your Oh oh my god, I can't believe you mentioned that.
I recently had a mentor of mine just like pressure
me to do that. He's like, you must go get
the l SATs. You must go because I shared with
that person how I feel, you know. But you know,
the funny thing is, Freida, a lot of people don't
know that I'm actually not by nature confrontational. I grew

(01:02:54):
up like I was a pretty shy kid, you know.
I also like to read a lot and do doing
yafed and all. That was very much outside my comfort zone.
And yes, people think of me as like, oh, no,
this is what he likes to do, and I don't.

Speaker 3 (01:03:09):
I don't, you know, I don't want to be a lawyer.

Speaker 1 (01:03:12):
I feel like it's it's a pretty adversarial kind of thing.
Now there are all kinds of lawyers, including people who
do like estates. It doesn't have to be adversarial. But
when people tell me I should become a lawyer, clearly
it's the thinking. And frankly it's like they don't realize
I actually would love to do something nice, you know,

(01:03:32):
bridge building community, you know, building and organizing and developing
sometimes measly positive.

Speaker 2 (01:03:40):
You know, wasn't that your first calling with social work?

Speaker 1 (01:03:44):
Well, it's yeah, social work was going to be more
like individual counseling like that, which.

Speaker 2 (01:03:49):
Is also yeah, it's not like being a shark.

Speaker 1 (01:03:52):
Right exactly. And you know, I think I think that
sort of ship has sailed. You know, I never went
on to get my l MSW or the LCSW, which
is required. There are some opportunities, you know, to do
like coaching or you know, they're mentoring and things like that.

(01:04:12):
It's possible. I'm thinking bigger picture. I'm thinking more sort
of community wide global. You know, I'm a systems kind
of guy. But again, I'm not pressuring myself into anything
at the moment. I guess I have the luxury a
little bit to sort of take a deep breath and
sort of carefully plan my next chapter.

Speaker 2 (01:04:33):
What would you expect the reaction to this interview is
going to be because people have strong feelings about you.

Speaker 1 (01:04:39):
Yeah, you know, I tell people I don't even blame
you for having strong feelings. And it may take time
for people to feel differently, or they may never and
that's okay. You know, I'm not I'm not sort of
like expecting like a welcome or anything. You know, I've
lived my life here, and but I definitely wouldn't want
people to think that it's sincere. That's definitely not something

(01:05:01):
I think it's you know, it would be great if
people realize that this genuineness to what I'm saying and
there is and you know, and you know, whether they
want to take take it and accept it or whatever,
it's up to them. I really am not expecting. Like

(01:05:24):
I said to me, it was just sort of like
my life was so public for ten twelve years in
a certain way, and then I sort of sort of
quietly slinked away. And I gave you the example that
like a relative of mine, a sibling of mine, sent
me this screenshot of a text message that was making
the rounds in the Hababi world about a fully moster

(01:05:46):
is doing this and that, and it had zero truth
to it. It was just because you know, I became
this sort of go to boogeyman and I figured, you
know what, I should probably go out there and make
it clear that from now on, anything like this that
you see it's not me. I'm out. I'm done. I'm
proud of a lot of the work that I've done.

(01:06:06):
And you know, if my son or a daughter ever
sees this interview, I want them to know, you know,
I worked hard, I believed in it, and I still do.
I believe that, you know, kids should get a well
rounded education. I think I learned a lot and I
realized that the method could have been done differently, and
I would have done it differently if if you know,
in hindsight.

Speaker 3 (01:06:25):
But that's that.

Speaker 2 (01:06:26):
Yeah, all I'm going to say to wrap this up
is personally, I very much relate to being able to
rethink things. I have done it multiple times in my life,
and I think it's a great privilege to be able
to do it. It's probably that the like one of
the greatest highlights of my leaving the set of Community
Journey is that I was able to rethink my life

(01:06:47):
and rethink it again and again. And again, and that
that is something that we as humans. It's just it's just,
you know, it's a gift. It's something that and to
be able to give ourselves that freedom to say I
saw it that way and now I'm seeing it differently, right,
And I don't know how I'm going to see it
in the future. And maybe I'm so freaking wrong right now.

(01:07:09):
And I can only try to keep an open mind, right.

Speaker 1 (01:07:13):
And I wish more people were able to sort of
like be okay with changing their minds. You know, we
live in such a like black and white kind of
world now, and it's so hard for people to change
their minds even if they see the truth, you know.
So I think if someone gets that out of this interview,
I think that would be great.

Speaker 2 (01:07:33):
Yeah. Anything I was supposed to ask you, You think
I should have asked you that I didn't.

Speaker 1 (01:07:37):
No. I think we touched on the We touched everything,
and it was certainly a lot, and we went over time.
I'm mindful of the hour. I see the clock ticking,
So I told.

Speaker 2 (01:07:47):
You it's going to feel like fifteen minutes. I did
not think we would stay under an hour. It was
my feeling that that's why I warned you.

Speaker 3 (01:07:58):
And the funny thing is I could going. But I
think you know, the points been made.

Speaker 1 (01:08:03):
We made the general points, and I appreciate, I really
appreciate that you decided to do this interview because I
think it sort of falls outside the kind of scope
that you normally do. You profile sort of nice you know,
community events and places and sometimes people.

Speaker 3 (01:08:21):
This is different.

Speaker 1 (01:08:21):
You had to lean into something that was a little
more controversial, and again, you have no idea how people
will accept it. People might be upset that you sort
of gave me a platform. And again, as far as
I'm concerned, it's all fair. It's all fair, you know,
I accept it. That's all for me.

Speaker 2 (01:08:38):
I knew that people would be people would possibly be upset.
That wasn't really my concern. You know, I'm trying really
hard to facie them have a hard time understanding to
make a point that I'm not here to glorify. I'm
trying to have a conversation. And I was a little
bit concerned about that, like I'm not here to be
like you know, we're always showing only the positive side.

(01:09:02):
I didn't speak to you earlier. Now I speak to you.
I just never wanted to have to end up fighting.
You know, that's something I never want to do in
an interview, like that's not my style. I want to
have a discussion with someone who you know, I feel
like we can we can have an The world is
so full of debate. I just don't want that. But anyway,

(01:09:24):
I really enjoy talking to you, so so say thank
you so much. Should I link anything in the video description? No,
if you change your mind your law practice, I'm kidding.

Speaker 1 (01:09:36):
Look, Stettel will not continue as it's been, so it
may turn into something that sort of puts out nice,
uplifting things, kind of like a little bit like what
you're doing, but from a different in different way, or
it may be something else. So it doesn't hurt for
people to follow it as long as they know that
what they're seeing there from the past is different from

(01:09:58):
what they would be seeing there in the future.

Speaker 2 (01:10:00):
Great, I'll do that and I'll link Stell and whatever
else we might decide in the video description. Thank you
enough to lead so much, and also to the viewers
on YouTube and the podcast listeners as well, thank you
and bye bye.

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