Ayala Fader: How Do Haredi Jews Deal With Religious Doubt? [OTD 3/3]

18Forty Podcast

18Forty

Religion & Spirituality, Judaism

4.6 • 638 Ratings

🗓️ 1 July 2025

⏱️ 96 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this episode of the 18Forty Podcast, we talk to Ayala Fader—an anthropologist who studies American Haredi communities and their “hidden heretics”—about the personal, familial, and communal factors that pull us toward and push us away from different Jewish communities.
In this episode we discuss:

How should we respond to the discomfort we experience when the communities we live in don’t measure up to the communities we desire?
How has the internet changed Hasidic and yeshivish cultures over the past three decades?
How has the surge of antisemitism and anti-Zionism affected the views of Hasidic Jews?

Tune in to hear a conversation about the ways we seek out and build communities that nourish us.

Interview begins at 12:48.

Ayala Fader is a professor of anthropology at Fordham University. Her research investigates contemporary North American Jewish identities and languages and engages key issues at the intersection of religion, Jewish Studies, gender, and linguistic anthropology, including language and media. She is also the founding director of the Demystifying Language Project, a partnership between academia and public high schools, housed in the New York Center for Public Anthropology at Fordham. Fader is the author of Mitzvah Girls: Bringing Up the Next Generation of Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn and Hidden Heretics: Jewish Doubt in the Digital Age.

References:

“Failure Goes to Yeshivah” by David Bashevkin

Mitzvah Girls: Bringing Up the Next Generation of Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn by Ayala Fader

Hidden Heretics: Jewish Doubt in the Digital Age by Ayala Fader

Naftuli Moster with Frieda Vizel: "Why I left Hasidic education activism"

When Prophecy Fails by Leon Festinger, Henry W. Riecken, and Stanley Schachter

Jew Vs Jew by Samuel G. Freedman

18Forty Podcast: “Rav Moshe Weinberger: Can Mysticism Become a Community?”

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Introduce your little ones to the timeless stories of the Tanakh with my first Tanakh stories,
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1:41.7	Hi friends and welcome to the 1840 podcast where each month we explore different topic balancing modern sensibilities with traditional sensitivities to give you new approaches to timeless Jewish ideas.
1:46.6	I'm your host of Ed Bischoffkin and this month we're continuing our exploration of going off the derrach,
1:48.7	those who leave religious communities.
1:51.0	This podcast is part of a larger exploration
1:53.3	of those big, juicy Jewish ideas,
1:55.8	so be sure to check out 1840.org,
1:57.9	that's 1-8-F-O-R-T-Y.org,
2:00.0	where you can also find videos, articles, recommended
	...

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