The Frieda Vizel Podcast

Video version of this interview: https://youtu.be/dlp7-4Aq1tM Modi Rosenfeld is a brilliant and wonderful Jewish comedian whose work I've long been a huge fan of. He is able to talk to any audience, a skill that few have. It's incredible to me that his audience spans from the very secular to the very religious, including Hasidic Jews, which is part of his bit. In my latest interview I talk to Modi...

Video link: https://youtu.be/J1XGAMK4wng Happy Chanukah! This Chanukah I want to share some of my childhood memories by reading to you an unpublished essay about my childhood memories of Chanukah in the Hasidic village of Kiryas Joel. Wishing all who celebrate the holidays very happy holidays! Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-frieda-vizel-podcast--5824414/su...

Video version of this posting: https://youtu.be/Gk917OpgS_Q It is the tradition that before a Hasidic young man gets married, he attends a private session with an older rabbi who guides him in matters of sex and intimacy. Since sex is not a topic openly discussed in this society as it is considered immodest, this one lesson is potentially the first time the young groom learns about sex and the opp...

Video version here: https://youtu.be/AUdw8W71Gv8 *Sensitive content warning. This conversation contains adult themes.* Peggy Greenfield is a certified relationship and intimacy coach who grew up in the Satmar Hasidic community of Williamsburg, and now serves this population. Peggy is not in the community herself anymore, which gives her a unique vantage point from which to tackle challenges of sex...

Video link: https://youtu.be/Ovl9HbcTuUI This is a discussion about the documentary 'City of Joel', with the filmmaker Jesse Sweet. It's a documentary about a turf war in the insular Hasidic Village of Kiryas Joel. Kiryas Joel is a Satmar village in Orange County New York, and it's where I lived for the first twenty-five years of my life. The documentary includes amazing footage of the village I g...

Video version of this interview: https://youtu.be/vbwZcttuNOQ Miriam Anzovin is a Jewish content creator who does videos about the Talmud, Jewish lore reactions and even holiday themed makeup tutorials. She is a warm, funny and witty Jewish woman and I find a friend in her in the content creation journey. Join me for a discussion with the wonderful Miriam about her background, about her relationsh...

Video version of this interview here: https://youtu.be/5-RsTIrIbmo Lea Kalisch has a dream to sing at the Superbowl, in Yiddish, with a shtreimel. She is a singer of many genres, but some of her Yiddish songs reflect a longing for a simple, religious world. "I am a shtetel Neshama (soul), a Jew from yesterday. I should have been a fruma, my hashtag is 'oyvey'." We hear so many stories of people fr...

Youtube video: https://youtu.be/aTkJpC3h7cg Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-frieda-vizel-podcast--5824414/support .

Join me for an interview with the Hasidic Yiddish influencer Raizy Fried. Please check out the youtube version of this video here: https://youtu.be/oycLsS4ulyg In my work documenting the Hasidic community, I've gone to great lengths to bring out of the shadows the story of women in this world and their voices. It has been incredibly difficult, as much of the female sphere is modesty and behind a c...

Link to video version of this conversation: https://youtu.be/O-ov6vTAAqQ?si=uqY1x8Yt-8woN-TD In this video I talk to Hasidic Jew Rabbi Mendel Hersh Paneth about the community's complicated relationship to animals. People's fear of dogs, the way that animals are slaughtered for kosher purposes and the ritual of kapores. Stay tuned for additional discussions with Rabbi MH Paneth.  Become a supporter...

*Note: the play discussed here contains violence* For the video version of this interview see here. In this long-form interview, I talk to theater director Igor Goylak about a powerful production titled 'Our Class'. It's a play that tackles timely themes of the human capacity for evil, antisemitism, and the long arc of history. I saw the play in Brooklyn and it's now playing in Manhattan. Igor is...

For YouTube version see here: https://youtu.be/DQgG_Pzxazg Baily is a character of a Hasidic woman who spends her summers in the bungalow colonies in upstate New York. In this episode, she shares the trials and tribulations of the experience. This segment is comedy, in the great tradition of the Catskills being a place for comedy. Leah Forster is a brilliant comedian who has spent years entertaini...

Andrew Jacobs directed the beautiful documentary 'Four Seasons Lodge' about holocaust survivors who spent every summer in the Catskills in a bungalow colony, connecting and loving life. The documentary follows them during their last years, as they are in their 80s, navigating the end of their time together. They are full of laughter, love, humor, sorrow, and memories of the horrors they went throu...

Video version of this interview: https://youtu.be/311WBTY7mrs Tuvia Tenonbom is a character! He grew up in the Haredi enclave of Bnei Brak, which I've introduced you to in another video. He left the fold in his early twenties and became a bestselling author and journalist in Germany - with oft-hilarious, oft-controversial views. During covid, he was sent on an assignment to the insular Haredi encl...

Video interview: https://youtu.be/2saQ0LEwZXQ Gita Katz is a larger-than-life character. I got to know her through Pearl, the famous Hasidic woman whom I have had the honor of having on this program before. In this interview, she shares what it was like to grow up in Hasidic Williamsburg in the shadow of the Holocaust. Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-frieda...

For the video version of this segment, click here: https://youtu.be/jiE9cTn6Yi0 Riki Rose grew up in Hasidic Williamsburg, in a very conservative family. From when she was young, she had that star celebrity quality to her. But as a woman, her ability to fully express her talents was significantly limited by the religious laws on Kol Isha, which prohibits women from performing to male audiences. St...

Video version of this segment: https://youtu.be/tq8y3KkAWTk As many of you know, my first language is Yiddish. It is the language of the Satmar Hasidic community I come from. The story of why I grew up speaking Yiddish, and not Hebrew, is intimately tied to the story of the birth of Israel, Zionism and Jewish language. And so, today I want to delve into the history of how two Jewish languages came...

For the video version of this discussion, see here: https://youtu.be/S2LMqtNjg6c The Hasidic community has been the subject of great, lurid fascination. People love to hear the stories of its unusual customs and darker sides. I see this fascination as part of a larger fascination with subcultures and cults. For instance, Youtube is full of channels that tell ex-Hasidic, ex-Mormon, ex-Amish and ex-...

Video version of this segment here: https://youtu.be/_H1hjrS2MLo A chained wife is a woman who is chained to a man in marriage, even after the relationship ends. This can happen in Jewish marriages when one partner refuses to give or accept the Get, the religious divorce. Malky is a Hasidic woman in Kiryas Joel who has been a chained wife for 4 years. In recent weeks the activist Flatbush Girl has...

Link to video version of this interview: https://youtu.be/8oVcC5z24c4 The Satmar Rabbi is one of Hasidic Jewry's great figures, yet his legacy is mired in deep controversy. He is credited with much of the revival of Hungarian Hasidism post-holocaust. Still, his anti-zionism draws deep criticism, especially since he was rescued during the holocaust by the Kastner train, a special rescue train that...

For the video version, see here: https://youtu.be/ywWcEMPALlM You might have heard that in Judaism, there are Hasidic sects. What do we mean by sects? What are the sects, and what’s the difference among them? In this segment, we’ll do a brief introduction to what Hasidic sects are. Please feel free to leave a comment with your questions! The book referenced in this video is ‘Hasidism, A New Histor...

A candid vlog with my thoughts on appropriate dress in Hasidic Williamsburg. Discussing tourist dress, the model Marisa Papen who walked through Williamsburg without any clothes, and my own choice to wear pants as an ex-Satmar woman. Video version: https://youtu.be/bE4mSWJzk3I Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-frieda-vizel-podcast--5824414/support .

Youtube video link: https://youtu.be/2BmWbcCMW3M?si=B3yDwGD7exBuY4fc In many of my videos, I've explored how Hasidic Jews live in the 21st century. *But what happens to those for whom this way of life doesn't work?* Some, like myself, leave. But not everyone who has doubts or different beliefs leaves. Some stay. And in this interview, I explore the stories of what we'll call here "the double lifer...

Video link: https://youtu.be/TkUS0jzJci4?si=QJJ8X5PKB_KKFNrq This is a conversation with Dr. Howard Rosman, the longtime pediatrician serving the Williamsburg Hasidic community. When I first heard about him from his granddaughter, I spoke to some people in the community to ask them what they knew of him, and it was soon clear that he was a beloved icon in this community. My aim in this interview w...

Video link: https://youtu.be/LpW30oZh9rY?si=Z0XV7PGhEhVpOCJD This is a personal essay I wrote many years ago, shortly after leaving the Hasidic community. It's about my experience during the Get ceremony. A Get is a religious divorce and the ceremony involves several ancient traditions. A little while ago, when I first tried my first live reading for the camera, I experimented by reading 'The Get'...