Shulem Deen was a Skverer— a member of one of the most insular Hasidic sects in the U.S. Then he got curious about secular life and the world outside his small village in Rockland County, NY. The community branded him a heretic and expelled him. And his wife and five children renounced him.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Audio
Nelson Algren wrote “A Walk on the Wild Side” and won the first National Book Award for “The Man with the Golden Arm,” but was too gritty for most critics
Stephen Bloom tells Jim Fleming about a group of Orthodox Jews who moved from Brooklyn to Postville to run a kosher slaughterhouse.
Thomas Friedman says the US is falling behind on the global stage.
Singer/Songwriter John Wesley Harding (AKA novelist Wesley Stace) talks to Anne Strainchamps about his double life as a musician and a novelist. Harding has transformed one of his songs into a novel called “Misfortune.”
Travel writer William Dalrymple has lived in India since 1989, witnessing the economic boom and the cultural changes that followed.
Rumspringa is the Amish custom of allowing sixteen year olds a period of total freedom to experience the temptations of the world before they choose the strictures of a traditional Amish life
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