The Second Coming of ASK A JEW: ChayaLeah Sufrin and Yael Bar tur Are Back!

The Unspeakeasy With Meghan Daum

Meghan Daum

Society & Culture

4.7 • 855 Ratings

🗓️ 19 September 2022

⏱️ 97 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

ChayaLeah and Yael are both Jewish, but in very different ways. ChayaLeah has lived her whole life in an Orthodox Hasidic community in Southern California. Yael is a secular Israeli now living in New York City. In 2020, the two became friends when they met online and began having conversations about Judaism — many of which consisted of Yael asking ChayaLeah questions about orthodox Jews that she would have been afraid or embarrassed to ask someone else. The discussions were so interesting that they began recording them and from there, the ASK A JEW podcast was born. In this conversation, ChayaLeah explains the meaning behind the various Jewish holidays this season, which Meghan mostly associates with parking rules suspensions in New York City. They also talk about the benefits and drawbacks of living in a religious community, marrying early (in an arranged marriage, no less) versus staying single for a long time, and how ChayaLeah will go about looking for wives for her sons. They also cover timelier subjects, including a recent New York Times article about the quality of eduction in yeshivas.

This episode offers juicy bonus content! Last time, the ladies compared notes about which famous terrorists and world dictators qualify as "hot" despite being horrible human beings. They reprise that discussion in the bonus content and also reflect on the death of Queen Elizabeth and the hotness of various royals. You can access this by becoming a paid subscriber to Meghan's new Substack at https://meghandaum.substack.com.

Guest Bios:

ChayaLeah Sufrin was raised in an Orthodox Jewish home in Long Beach, CA. After attending university in New York, ChayaLeah moved back to Southern California and spent fifteen years teaching High school Jewish history and as the Education Director at Shul by the Shore. ChayaLeah served as the Senior Jewish Educator at Long Beach Hillel for three years and is now the Executive Director. ChayaLeah, together with her husband Boruch, has four teenage sons.

Yael Bar-tur is a crisis communications and social media consultant who previously served as the director of social media and digital strategy for the New York City Police Department where she developed and implemented the social media and digital communications strategy.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the unspeakable podcast.
0:05.3	I'm your host, Megan Down.
0:07.2	My guests, back by popular demand, are Chialaya Safran and Yaila Bartur.
0:14.0	That's the best I'm going to do with their name pronunciations.
0:17.5	They were here back in April, talking about their podcast, Ask a Jew.
0:22.7	Now, Haya Leia and Yael are Jewish in very different ways.
0:27.2	Hayaaya has lived her whole life in an Orthodox Hasidic community in Southern California.
0:33.2	Yail is a secular Israeli now living in New York City.
0:37.1	And the two became friends through an online
0:40.4	community, an online community around yet another podcast. And they began a dialogue about
0:46.6	Judaism, much of which consisted of Yael asking Hailaya questions about the Orthodox world
0:53.1	that she said she would have been afraid or embarrassed to ask most people.
0:57.5	Those conversations were so interesting that they started recording them. And from there emerged,
1:03.0	Ask a Jew, which I have to say is one of my podcasts. So I'm really excited to have them back.
1:09.9	Now, I've been talking a lot at the top of the show lately, so I'm not going to say much more here.
1:15.5	But I do want to make a note about this podcast's new home on Substack.
1:21.0	By home, I mean that Megan Dowm.substack.com is the place to go now to support the show financially and to leave comments
1:30.4	about the show. This used to take place on Patreon, but now permanently, from now on, for a variety of
1:37.8	reasons, it's on Substack. And that's where basically all of my stuff is going to be announcements about
1:42.9	anything I'm doing, new writing, which I am going to be announcements about anything I'm doing.
1:46.9	New writing, which I am going to be doing soon.
1:58.2	If you were a Patreon supporter, you have automatically been moved to Substack and given a complimentary month after which you can become a paid subscriber just like you were at Patreon. And you're no longer being charged at Patreon, by the way.
	...

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