The Frieda Vizel Podcast

Video version of this segment: https://youtube.com/live/_5ZJi2noZOg?feature=share Naomi Seidman shares about her research on Jewish love and romance, her own marriage and the loss of her beloved pet. We discuss her book "The Marriage Plot" which you can get here: https://amzn.to/4vIkgtb Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-frieda-vizel-podcast--5824414/support .

Video link to this conversation: https://youtu.be/qjtlgrLe92w Meet Samuel Marks, a young collector whose passion for rare Judaica brings overlooked corners of postwar Hasidic history vividly to life. In this first interview, we get to know Samuel through the objects he studies, preserves, and loves. Raised in a secular Jewish family and now a law student, Samuel has built a remarkable collection o...

A 26-year-old collector opens his personal library to reveal the dramatic, human stories hidden inside antique Jewish Talmuds. In this video, Samuel Marks takes us through his personal collection of Talmuds from different eras, using each volume to tell a larger story about how the Talmud was printed, censored, altered, and preserved under extraordinary historical pressure. Samuel is a self-taught...

Video of this interview: Melissa Weisz grew up in Hasidic, Yiddish-speaking Boro Park and left the fold well before the OTD phenomenon became famous. I believe she left the fold before me, and I'm of the old timers now! I have been waiting for the opportunity to share her story with my viewers. Here, we finally get Melissa's story live. Please come if you would like to see this live and ask questi...

Video link to this interview: https://youtu.be/bk6Q2RIN_mE "You're not shutting me up." - Jewish comedy icon Judy Gold, 2026 Judy Gold is a lot of things. She's an icon, she's a comic, a writer, a gay woman who was at the forefront of fighting for LGBT rights. But one of the things that is her foremost descriptor is: Jewish. She was never a comic who was also Jewish. But always a Jewish comic. Her...

Link to video version of this episode: In this episode, I’m joined by historian Glenn Dynner, who was my professor years ago and played a pivotal role in getting me started as a tour guide. Our conversation focuses on Polish Jewish history, Hasidism, and how Jewish life in Poland developed under pressure, change, and violence. Before we begin, here are Glenn’s books, which come up throughout the i...

Video link to this episode: https://youtu.be/QuMAGZuI5J0 Frieda and  @_yiddishkeit  discuss the seder with a mix of amazing haggadah illustrations and childhood memories.   CHAPTERS  0:00 intro 2:51 illustrated haggadah  5:49 the opening rituals of the seder  10:33 the steps of the seder 14:14 the symbolism of the matzah, maror, wine  16:37 instructions in Yiddish  21:04 the story of the Exodus  2...

video link to this trip down memory lane: https://youtu.be/S3c7Px2jMRo Hasidic Jews go hard for Passover. The goal is not to come into any contact with bread. But this has turned into a full half-year operation for some, like my family. Here I talk about my childhood memories in Kiryas Joel, preparing for Passover. The methodical cleaning, then opening the Passover kitchen, then cooking everything...

video link to this episode: https://youtu.be/XLDwhIRumwU This is comedy. Baily is the character of the famous Jewish comedian Leah Forster. I love Baily. She is very kind to me and will help me find a husband soon. She also very willingly shares about her Hasidic life. She's now extremely busy preparing for passover. Hasidic Jews go all out cleaning, cooking, shopping for Passover. To make things...

Link to video version of this episode: https://youtu.be/kP_NgV7y_Cs What happens when modern medicine meets a tight-knit Hasidic world? In this long-form conversation, Frieda Vizel speaks with Dr. Lynne Quittell, a pediatric pulmonologist with more than 40 years of experience and decades of close work with Orthodox and Hasidic Jewish families. Dr. Quittell has practiced at world-renowned instituti...

Video link to this episode: https://youtu.be/Biqnh3CZIFo I have so many thoughts and feelings about illness and being ex-Hasidic. About losing community support, about how my mother is fighting for her health, about returning to be at her bedside and wanting to be there but also fearing the ptsd of some rituals. This video cropped out of my high holiday season time spent with my mother.  Many than...

Video link to this conversation: https://youtu.be/n8g9RwmGwF8 Dan is a Jewish interpreter who immigrated from the Soviet Union. He believes his Soviet past taught him important lessons about recognizing when society takes a wrong turn. He reached out to me to share his story, and I invited him for an in-depth interview. We discussed his Soviet upbringing, his life journey, and his experiences as a...

Video link to this episode: https://youtu.be/Nmw9jZM2aYU The story of a Jew who grew up in the Soviet Union and learned little about his Judaism but some other hard lessons that would shape his life. Dan is a high-level interpreter and a thoughtful, intelligent man. He reached out to me after noticing how different his experience as a Soviet Jew was from mine. I grew up deeply engaged with my Jewi...

Video link to this episode: https://youtu.be/4MPf67ftXME Jacob Kornbluh is a Hasidic reporter covering the Mamdani beat at a moment when Zohran Mamdani has become a lightning rod in Jewish communities. For many, Mamdani represents fear, anger, political anxiety, and deep uncertainty about where New York is headed. And in the middle of that storm is Kornbluh. Recently featured in The New York Times...

Video link to this full Pearl repost: https://youtu.be/Uo5mf0_1izY Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-frieda-vizel-podcast--5824414/support .

Link to video version of this conversation: https://youtu.be/2iPiYwftPyg In this interview, I speak with Miriam Vidal about her childhood growing up as a Jehovah’s Witness, and her eventual decision to leave the faith. As a Hasidic child growing up in Kiryas Joel, there was a strange building behind my house that we simply called “the church.” Every Saturday, rows of cars would pull up, and we kid...

Video version: https://youtu.be/MyGxlBywfAc Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-frieda-vizel-podcast--5824414/support .

Video link to this episode: https://youtu.be/css7bPGITTE This video is le’ilui nishmas (dedicated to the souls) of the dear people lost at Bondi Beach, and dedicated to their loving families in mourning. May the families find moments of light in these unbearably hard days. My heart is with them. In this conversation, I speak with Sydney resident Rabbi Yosef Eichenblatt, who shares his oral history...

Video version here: https://youtu.be/F9xzvdkMXMI Let me read to you some Yiddish from 1977 and unpack the values and worldview of the Hasidic young girls through the moral lessons presented in this book. See how they were introduced to social values of obedience, kindness, respect to the elders, safety, trust in each other, modesty, and more. Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreake...

video version of this episode: https://youtu.be/RK7_--5f0Tc What happens when intimacy is expected before it’s understood? The Wedding Night is a striking and deeply intimate documentary by Orthodox filmmaker Rachel Elitzur. It explores a rarely discussed reality inside ultra-Orthodox Jewish life: couples who marry after only a handful of supervised dates, then face the expectation of consummating...

Video version of this episode: https://youtu.be/naUJMITJ5sY The article is here: https://friedavizel.com/2014/06/06/a-church-in-kiryas-joel Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-frieda-vizel-podcast--5824414/support .

Video version of this episode: https://youtu.be/ClAU6WJfj8U One of my earliest video and, in my view, an important one to repost at this time. Forgive the repost. Lots of new content coming soon. Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-frieda-vizel-podcast--5824414/support .

Video version here: https://youtu.be/ZlWRN4jo-CA  As someone who grew up in Kiryas Joel and left the fold, I have a lot to say on this Hasidic village. There's good and bad. There are issues, and yes there are valid criticisms on its relationship to the welfare system, although this doesn't take away from the facts: that this is a community where the vast majority of men are gainfully employed and...

Video version of this episode: https://youtu.be/qUDGHnwTUPw Follow along with the pdf of the story here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JCIYkr489nAvNDZQapUJ9UzTdmeCpt-8/view?usp=sharing  Let me read to you some Yiddish from 1977 and unpack the values and worldview of the Hasidic young girls through the moral lessons presented in this book. See how they were introduced to social values of obedien...

Video link to this interview: https://youtu.be/jcz0xmkm10s The Hasidic village of Kiryas Joel’s early days in the 1970s and 80s were anything but quiet. They were marked by infighting, lawsuits, dissidents, and a legal battle so consequential it’s still taught in American law schools today. In this interview, I speak with lawyer Michael Sussman, the man who came to represent some of Kiryas Joel’s...