The Frieda Vizel Podcast

Video link to this conversation: https://youtu.be/uQ8YqHA_id8

📸 Videography: Upperdeck Film / https://www.instagram.com/upperdeck_film/ 
✂️ Edited: Lee Kupac / @mayo.nap 
👰 Wedding footage: Shmilly Feldman / https://www.instagram.com/chasidish_lifter/
More content with Pearl: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhW2QoO54ycylVdMte0xOgmKWkyksKzyv&si=hOy-eozSCg2cWErr

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Video link to this monologue: https://youtu.be/A1aOTCsYQfM

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Video link to this conversation: https://youtu.be/92Q4LAxh_Ug

A year ago, Pearl sparked one of the most heated discussions on this channel.
As a Satmar Hasidic woman, she shared her views on the Holocaust, anti-Semitism, Israel, and Zionism—views that many viewers strongly disagreed with. The response was intense.
In this conversation, I sit down with Pearl again and ask her how she feels about the backlash, whether she regrets speaking so openly, and why she continues to stand by her beliefs.
This interview is not about agreeing or disagreeing. It is an...

Link to video version of this episode: https://youtu.be/aeVekOqP7-Y

The tables have turned! The wonderful, renowned Orthodox Jewish podcaster Dovid Bashevkin, host of 18forty, who interviewed me for his podcast, returned the favor and joined me for a candid conversation about the inside-outside perspectives. He inside, I outside, together we have an interest in the same thing from different angles.

Bashevkin is one of the most thoughtful voices in the Orthodox Jewish world, for a wide-ranging conversation about faith, doubt, Shabbos, Jewish identity, community, America, Israel, assimilation, spirituality, and what it means to...

Video link to this interview: https://youtu.be/fV8LeAiQQe8

Join us for an insightful conversation with Dr. Yossi David, a leading researcher in social biases, migration trauma, and media influence. We delve into how leaving insular communities mirrors migration challenges, the impact of fiction and AI on perception, and the importance of trust and skepticism in society today.

Key topics discussed:
-The psychological challenges faced by individuals leaving ultra-Orthodox communities, compared to immigration trauma 
-Language barriers and cultural transitions when integrating into secular society
-The influence of fiction, media, and A...

Video version of this episode: https://youtu.be/vUl5DjWhCBk
Lovina's personal story: https://youtu.be/GHF0lQS2CHs

Former Swartzentruber Amish teacher Lovina Zook takes us inside the world of Amish education, sharing detailed insights into what a typical school day looks like in one of America's most closed communities. From the one-room schoolhouse structure to the daily routines, strict dress codes, and teaching methods, Lovina offers a rare glimpse into this traditional education system.

Lovina speaks with genuine enthusiasm about her experiences as both a student and teacher in the Amish school system...

Link to the video version of this episode: https://youtu.be/GHF0lQS2CHs

Lovina Zook, a former Swartzentruber Amish woman who left her community at age 18 with only $24 to her name. Lovina shares her compelling story of growing up in one of the strictest Amish settlements, without electricity, running water, or any exposure to technology, where she raised her 12 younger siblings as the oldest girl.

She opens up about the difficult decision to leave her family and community behind to pursue a different life, and the challenges of adapting to the modern world. Today, Lovina...

video link: 

I feel I am completely incoherent here but also raw in a way I felt I wanted to share anyway. I’ve organized my thoughts in many videos in ways that I think (hope) is clear and accessible. Here’s where you see a bit of the me behind the analysis. The personal and analytical as I sit and reflect and process a story that I think is exceptional and beautiful and imperfect and problematic but also to me, so very precious.

Meanwhile, to all of you who celebrate mother's day - wishing you a won...

Video link: https://youtube.com/live/XDNed30Yqng?feature=share

Riki and I recently talked children's games and had fun on my living room floor:
https://youtu.be/uvwSkTZbjOo

She will come over to my place, hopefully on May 5 and at 5pm we will go live together from my computer. Please chat with us in the comments, or watch it later if you can't make it!
Follow the brilliant performer  @riki_rose  on Youtube and on instagram.


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Link to the video version: https://youtu.be/uvwSkTZbjOo

You can buy kugelech here:
https://amzn.to/3YbJPTH
Can you play this game? Do you know these chants?
In this video, I explore kugela (plural: kugelach)—a simple game of five stones that carries centuries of history. With Yiddish singer Riki Rose, we try to play, reminisce about childhood games, and uncover a whole world of “oldies” that once shaped how children everywhere played.
Before toy stores, before screens, children made their own fun—on stoops, in streets, with whatever they could find. Many of those...

Video version of this segment: https://youtube.com/live/_5ZJi2noZOg?feature=share

Naomi Seidman shares about her research on Jewish love and romance, her own marriage and the loss of her beloved pet. We discuss her book "The Marriage Plot" which you can get here:
https://amzn.to/4vIkgtb

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Video link to this conversation: https://youtu.be/qjtlgrLe92w

Meet Samuel Marks, a young collector whose passion for rare Judaica brings overlooked corners of postwar Hasidic history vividly to life.

In this first interview, we get to know Samuel through the objects he studies, preserves, and loves. Raised in a secular Jewish family and now a law student, Samuel has built a remarkable collection of Judaica, with a particular focus on postwar Hasidic materials. His collection includes rare texts and objects related to the Satmar Rebbe - Rabbi Joel Teitelbaum, postwar intra-Hasidic disputes, broadsides, early A...

A 26-year-old collector opens his personal library to reveal the dramatic, human stories hidden inside antique Jewish Talmuds.


In this video, Samuel Marks takes us through his personal collection of Talmuds from different eras, using each volume to tell a larger story about how the Talmud was printed, censored, altered, and preserved under extraordinary historical pressure. Samuel is a self-taught collector whose engagement with Jewish texts grew out of immersive learning in Hasidic spaces, particularly within the Satmar community in Williamsburg.

Raised in a secular Jewish family in Boston, Samuel later reconnected deeply with Jewish...

Video of this interview: Melissa Weisz grew up in Hasidic, Yiddish-speaking Boro Park and left the fold well before the OTD phenomenon became famous. I believe she left the fold before me, and I'm of the old timers now! I have been waiting for the opportunity to share her story with my viewers. Here, we finally get Melissa's story live. Please come if you would like to see this live and ask questions. It will also be available for view later. Follow Melissa on her socials! https://www.instagram.com/melissaweisz/ https://www.melissaweisz.com/about Here's a trailer to...

Video link to this interview: https://youtu.be/bk6Q2RIN_mE

"You're not shutting me up." - Jewish comedy icon Judy Gold, 2026

Judy Gold is a lot of things. She's an icon, she's a comic, a writer, a gay woman who was at the forefront of fighting for LGBT rights. But one of the things that is her foremost descriptor is: Jewish. She was never a comic who was also Jewish. But always a Jewish comic. Her comedy is deeply Jewish. 

Yet since October 7, this has made her work surprisingly difficult. S...

Link to video version of this episode:

In this episode, I’m joined by historian Glenn Dynner, who was my professor years ago and played a pivotal role in getting me started as a tour guide. Our conversation focuses on Polish Jewish history, Hasidism, and how Jewish life in Poland developed under pressure, change, and violence.

Before we begin, here are Glenn’s books, which come up throughout the interview:
The Light of Learning: Hasidism in Poland on the Eve of the Holocaust / https://amzn.to/3LNJYduYankel's Tavern: Jews, Liquor, and Life in the Kingdom of P...

Video link to this episode: https://youtu.be/QuMAGZuI5J0

Frieda and  @_yiddishkeit  discuss the seder with a mix of amazing haggadah illustrations and childhood memories.
 
CHAPTERS 
0:00 intro
2:51 illustrated haggadah 
5:49 the opening rituals of the seder 
10:33 the steps of the seder
14:14 the symbolism of the matzah, maror, wine 
16:37 instructions in Yiddish 
21:04 the story of the Exodus 
23:41 David's childhood Haggadahs 
25:12 the literal-ness of the Sarajevo Haggadah 
30:36 Bird's Head Haggadah 
34:04 Washington Haggadah 
37:15 The white Kittel 
38:20 messianic images 
42:53 the four sons throughout history 
51:26 Hasidic depiction of The...

video link to this trip down memory lane: https://youtu.be/S3c7Px2jMRo

Hasidic Jews go hard for Passover. The goal is not to come into any contact with bread. But this has turned into a full half-year operation for some, like my family. Here I talk about my childhood memories in Kiryas Joel, preparing for Passover. The methodical cleaning, then opening the Passover kitchen, then cooking everything from scratch for the holiday. It was a lot! My favorite part was definitely the cooking, the moment everything was done, and the fresh, hot, half-raw, piping bread...

video link to this episode: https://youtu.be/XLDwhIRumwU

This is comedy.

Baily is the character of the famous Jewish comedian Leah Forster.

I love Baily. She is very kind to me and will help me find a husband soon. She also very willingly shares about her Hasidic life. She's now extremely busy preparing for passover. Hasidic Jews go all out cleaning, cooking, shopping for Passover. To make things easier, Baily went glutton free for a whole year. She has a lot of ideas of how to cut corners and make things easier while...

Link to video version of this episode: https://youtu.be/kP_NgV7y_Cs

What happens when modern medicine meets a tight-knit Hasidic world?
In this long-form conversation, Frieda Vizel speaks with Dr. Lynne Quittell, a pediatric pulmonologist with more than 40 years of experience and decades of close work with Orthodox and Hasidic Jewish families. Dr. Quittell has practiced at world-renowned institutions, including Children’s Hospital of New York and Columbia University Irving Medical Center, and brings rare insight into how medical care unfolds inside insular religious communities.

Much of the discussion centers on Dr. Qu...

Video link to this episode:
https://youtu.be/Biqnh3CZIFo

I have so many thoughts and feelings about illness and being ex-Hasidic. About losing community support, about how my mother is fighting for her health, about returning to be at her bedside and wanting to be there but also fearing the ptsd of some rituals. This video cropped out of my high holiday season time spent with my mother. 

Many thanks to my editor Steve Milligan for the beautiful edit.https://www.instagram.com/shootitsteve/
Many thanks to the wonderful Youtuber Yiddishkeit for helping s...

Video link to this conversation: https://youtu.be/n8g9RwmGwF8

Dan is a Jewish interpreter who immigrated from the Soviet Union. He believes his Soviet past taught him important lessons about recognizing when society takes a wrong turn. He reached out to me to share his story, and I invited him for an in-depth interview. We discussed his Soviet upbringing, his life journey, and his experiences as a Jewish interpreter. Dan has thoughtful criticisms of contemporary human rights organizations (alongside genuine appreciation for their work) and feels it's important to share his unique perspective.

If...

Video link to this episode: https://youtu.be/Nmw9jZM2aYU

The story of a Jew who grew up in the Soviet Union and learned little about his Judaism but some other hard lessons that would shape his life.

Dan is a high-level interpreter and a thoughtful, intelligent man. He reached out to me after noticing how different his experience as a Soviet Jew was from mine. I grew up deeply engaged with my Jewishness, while he grew up almost entirely disconnected from it. Our conversation convinced me that Dan's story needed to be documented and...

Video link to this episode: https://youtu.be/4MPf67ftXME

Jacob Kornbluh is a Hasidic reporter covering the Mamdani beat at a moment when Zohran Mamdani has become a lightning rod in Jewish communities. For many, Mamdani represents fear, anger, political anxiety, and deep uncertainty about where New York is headed. And in the middle of that storm is Kornbluh.

Recently featured in The New York Times, Kornbluh occupies a complicated position. He reports on power while belonging to a community that often feels scrutinized by power. During COVID, some Hasidic critics accused him of “reporting on...

Video link to this full Pearl repost: https://youtu.be/Uo5mf0_1izY

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Link to video version of this conversation: https://youtu.be/2iPiYwftPyg

In this interview, I speak with Miriam Vidal about her childhood growing up as a Jehovah’s Witness, and her eventual decision to leave the faith.

As a Hasidic child growing up in Kiryas Joel, there was a strange building behind my house that we simply called “the church.” Every Saturday, rows of cars would pull up, and we kids would stand by the gate, watching and waving. Only years later, after I had left my own religious community, did I learn that this building was ac...

Video version: https://youtu.be/MyGxlBywfAc

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Video link to this episode: https://youtu.be/css7bPGITTE

This video is le’ilui nishmas (dedicated to the souls) of the dear people lost at Bondi Beach, and dedicated to their loving families in mourning. May the families find moments of light in these unbearably hard days. My heart is with them.

In this conversation, I speak with Sydney resident Rabbi Yosef Eichenblatt, who shares his oral history of the Chanukah 2025 attack in Sydney, an event his family lived through and one in which his daughter’s life was miraculously saved.

Rabbi Eichenblatt spea...

Video version here: https://youtu.be/F9xzvdkMXMI

Let me read to you some Yiddish from 1977 and unpack the values and worldview of the Hasidic young girls through the moral lessons presented in this book. See how they were introduced to social values of obedience, kindness, respect to the elders, safety, trust in each other, modesty, and more.

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video version of this episode: https://youtu.be/RK7_--5f0Tc

What happens when intimacy is expected before it’s understood?


The Wedding Night is a striking and deeply intimate documentary by Orthodox filmmaker Rachel Elitzur. It explores a rarely discussed reality inside ultra-Orthodox Jewish life: couples who marry after only a handful of supervised dates, then face the expectation of consummating their marriage on the wedding night.


The film grows out of Elitzur’s own traumatic wedding-night experience, which led her to seek out others with similar stories. Many participants felt...

Video version of this episode: https://youtu.be/naUJMITJ5sY

The article is here: https://friedavizel.com/2014/06/06/a-church-in-kiryas-joel

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-frieda-vizel-podcast--5824414/support.