THREAD: who am I? I've received a lot of new followers lately. Let me present myself:
1/ I grew up in the Satmar, chassidic community in Stamford Hill London to a rabbinic and moderately elite family. I lost my faith in its worldview at the age of 20 and left/was cast out.
2/ I made it to university to study Physics and Philosophy and graduated with a master's in these subjects this past summer. I've been studying Yiddish and chassidic culture for some years now. I have written a lot on my blog: journeyerblog.wordpress.com/category/judai…
3/ For personal reasons I went through a period of low output. I'm now back and am experimenting with the best ways to use my voice to share my knowledge about a very unique culture and way of life. For now I'm using Twitter for my micro-blogging and threads.
4/ I've written more about what motivates me at this point in time and my style here:
threadreaderapp.com/thread/1467131…
5/ I very much still see myself as chassidish, even if culturally so rather than strictly religious. I am not fighting to change the community, but I watch with excitement as change inevitably happens.
6/ I've written and talked a lot about my story in the last 6 years. For example here: .
But I have been on a continuous journey and have since changed the way I see things and my own narrative around my experiences.
7/ I don't have the answers to exactly what's going on and my journey often just seems surreal without the ability of fully making sense of it. But I am working on becoming comfortable with all aspects of my life in an integrated way: my western lifestyle & chassidish upbringing.
8/ During my time at university I was increasingly frustrated by the narrowing scope of acceptable thought and expression. In response I founded @BrisFreeSpeech. I wrote more about my views on free speech and how it is influenced by my journey here:
9/ My views on free thinking and free expression influence all my work. I see engaging in respectful dialogue as resistance to the increasing dogmatisation of the academic and intellectual world. I judge my interlocutors charitably, unless I have strong evidence of bad faith.
10/ I am involved in several research projects on the Yiddish language and chassidic culture. I write and give talks about these topics and I am constantly thinking how best to share my knowledge with the world, from my very unique position of university educated, chassidic-bred.
11/ I also use my experiences and stellar classical Jewish education in a consulting capacity, as well as to translate and interpret between Yiddish/rabbinic-Hebrew/rabbinic-Aramaic and English. I am currently working on a paper on the unique language of rabbinic law @HasidicU.
12/ There is a serious dearth of information in academia and wider society about the very unique chassidic community. Alongside other brilliant individuals, I contribute towards the narrowing of this gap. I feel enormously privileged that I have the ability to do so.
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