Simi Lichtman

Sex. Ostensibly there is nothing of the sort at Yeshiva University. As the exemplar of American Modern Orthodoxy, YU has something of a pristine reputation. Many parents send their children to YU with the hopes of preventing them from being sucked into the big, bad college world of drinking, drugs and, of course, sex. YU…

It’s always enlightening to realize how much I don’t know. I’ve spent my entire life ensconced in the Jewish Orthodox world, and in spite of that– or perhaps because of it– I hardly know anything. I mean, I know what brachah to say and when. I can even tell you what order to put your…

It was 2:00 AM and the joint was jumping. Men in suits bustled through the crowded street. Here and there, small pockets of girls were gathered as well. In the snippets of overheard conversations, I picked up Hebrew, Yiddish, and English. Everywhere, an overwhelming, unfamiliar, and putrid smell, the source of which was also the…

To be perfectly honest, I had to Google the term “Traditional Egalitarian” when I decided to write this piece. If admitting that hasn’t robbed me of all of my credibility, allow me to make it worse: the results were sparse and mostly unhelpful, so I had to then call my own personal Google, my dad….

I grew up in Baltimore, MD, where the one non-Jewish family within a 5-block radius was famous simply because they had Christmas decorations when the rest of us were lighting candles in our windows for Chanuka. I always felt bad for the kids in that house around Halloween–in the 15 years that I lived in…

I’m told that Modern Orthodoxy has a look. It’s funny to think of the Modern Orthodox as a stereotype, but only because I’m part of it and have been my whole life. You can see the stereotype of Hasidim in pretty much any Hollywood movie (test my theory–1 in 10 movies has a clip of…