Frieda Vizel

The Frieda Vizel Podcast

Religion EN ↓ 131 episodes

Welcome to in-depth conversations on Hasidism, Judaism, NYC, culture, education, religion and more! This podcast is hosted by popular Youtuber Frieda Vizel, who has been studying the Hasidic community for more than ten years. This is the podcast version of the video conversations which are also published on Youtube. Please reach out with feedback. Here's the youtube channel if you prefer to see the host and guests! :) Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-frieda-vizel-podcast--5824414/support .

Author

Frieda Vizel

Episodes

A special visit to Williamsburg with writer and former resident Phillip Lopate 18.05.2022 1:08:32

Williamsburg, Brooklyn has a rich immigrant history. Before the South Side became the Hasidic enclave that it is today, it was a much more eclectic immigrant neighborhood. Among its former residents is the writer Phillip Lopate, who grew up in what's now the heart of the Hasidic "shtetle". Phillip lived in Williamsburg from age 4 in 1947, until he reached about high school, but after his family mo...

Izzy Posen and Frieda Vizel live zoom conversation on Post-Haredi life, identity and relations 02.04.2022 1:16:58

I had the great pleasure of doing a live zoom conversation with fellow former-Hasid [OTD] and professional thinker Izzy Posen. Izzy is a prolific personality on Twitter, where he is eager to encourage nuanced, honest dialog among us ex-Haredim as well as with the communities we were raised in. This live zoom was an opportunity to ask what we need to leave behind when we leave, what obligations we...

Interview with Harry Weiss, former Williamsburg resident 02.02.2022 1:11:05

I'm delighted to be posting another video conversation with a Jewish Williamsburg "old-timer", this one with Harry/Chaim Weiss. Harry Weiss was born September 24, 1949, in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, and he lived there until 1960. Harry's parents, who were from Hungary, survived Auschwitz and the Holocaust. His father opened up a furniture-making factory on Marcy ave and Keap St. in 1955...

Shpanier Arbet / Jewish garment art with Elena Solomon 13.01.2022 40:25

In this video post, I explore a very interesting part of Hasidic clothing: the silver decorative strip found on the men's prayer shawls. I talk to Elena Solomon, who, together with Lilly Homer is writing an encyclopedia entry on the special craft involved in making these decorative garments. It's an art style unique to Ashkenazi Jews, and it's called 'shpanyer arbet'. For the video version of this...

In Conversation with Nathaniel Deutsch, Co-author of 'A Fortress in Brooklyn' 28.12.2021 1:22:51

I had the pleasure to talk to Nathaniel Deutsch about his new book on Hasidic Williamsburg. Nathaniel Deutsch is a professor of history at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he holds the Baumgarten Endowed Chair in Jewish Studies. He is the author of a number of books related to Hasidic history and culture, including The Maiden of Ludmir: A Jewish Holy Woman and Her World, The Jewish...

Interview with Nelly Grussgott on post-war Williamsburg, Brooklyn 23.09.2021 57:05

This video is part of a research project to document the way Hasidim came to America after the war and turned Williamsburg into an insular religious enclave. Nelly Grussgott was born in 1930 in Berlin. In 1940, she and her mother fled nazi Germany for NYC, but her father could not make it out. Although Nelly and her mother were relatively modern, in 1946 her mother remarried a very pious Hasidic m...