The Frieda Vizel Podcast

Video version of this episode: https://youtu.be/ClAU6WJfj8U

One of my earliest video and, in my view, an important one to repost at this time. Forgive the repost. Lots of new content coming soon.

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Video version here: https://youtu.be/ZlWRN4jo-CA 

As someone who grew up in Kiryas Joel and left the fold, I have a lot to say on this Hasidic village. There's good and bad. There are issues, and yes there are valid criticisms on its relationship to the welfare system, although this doesn't take away from the facts: that this is a community where the vast majority of men are gainfully employed and work incredibly hard. The stereotypes of this community as "welfare queens" whose men study torah and don't work is so damaging and not true.  @TylerOliveira 's recent video will so deeply reinforce these misconceptions. I've done a video where I went through the phone book and showed the extensive numbers of businesses Hasidim are into. It's so sad that his platform will create so much misrepresentation.

This is my first take reaction to his video. Please forgive my early morning rants and rambles. I am watching it raw with you. I find it quite upsetting and ignorant. I hope my deep feelings that this community is complicated, imperfect, should be criticized but is also often misrepresented comes through. This is long - well Tyler's video is long.

Please watch some of my other videos, especially my video on how Hasidim earn a living.
https://youtu.be/UXXOGYqbK5o

What it was like for me to grow up in Kiryas Joel
https://youtu.be/uHu_17N9GdE

My interview with Fradel Newman, lifetime resident of Kiryas Joel
https://youtu.be/HoTzWaF7dU8

Interview with civil rights lawyer Michael Sussman, who can really speak for some of the dark side
https://youtu.be/jcz0xmkm10s

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

Follow along with the pdf of the story here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JCIYkr489nAvNDZQapUJ9UzTdmeCpt-8/view?usp=sharing 

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. 

Please let me know what you think I missed.

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

Video link to this interview: https://youtu.be/jcz0xmkm10s

The Hasidic village of Kiryas Joel’s early days in the 1970s and 80s were anything but quiet. They were marked by infighting, lawsuits, dissidents, and a legal battle so consequential it’s still taught in American law schools today.

In this interview, I speak with lawyer Michael Sussman, the man who came to represent some of Kiryas Joel’s most outspoken internal critics during its formative years. Though he was neither Hasidic nor Orthodox, Sussman became deeply entangled in the village’s internal struggles—so much so that, to many of us growing up there, his name became part of the folklore. There was even a dissident synagogue nicknamed the Sussman Shul.

This conversation explores the early legal wars that shaped Kiryas Joel: battles over governance, power, dissent, and most famously, the creation of a public school for children with special needs. That case—Board of Education of Kiryas Joel Village School District v. Grumet—went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court and sits at the uneasy intersection of religious freedom and the separation of church and state.

I also approach this story personally. Kiryas Joel is where I grew up and spent 25 formative years of my life. I married at 18, became a mother to my son Seth shortly after, and absorbed these conflicts as background noise to childhood—names, sides, “politics” that hovered at the edges of daily life. As an adult, I’ve returned to this history with new questions and a deeper curiosity about how insular religious subcultures navigate American law.
This interview is part of a broader attempt to document the oral histories of Kiryas Joel’s early years. I have made repeated efforts to reach figures from the other side of these disputes to record their recollections as well, but so far without success. That invitation remains open.

If you want to go deeper into this story, here are essential resources:
Book — American Shtetl
https://amzn.to/49Lmz5z

Documentary — City of Joel
https://amzn.to/4soIDKC

Archival footage collected by dissident Joseph Waldman:
https://www.youtube.com/@thekingofaron

Website for Michael Sussman:
https://www.sussman.law/

This is a story about Kiryas Joel, but it’s also a story about America: about pluralism, law, dissent, and the price of making space for radically different ways of life under one constitutional roof.

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

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

This video is the extended sit-down conversation from my visit with the Bukharyan Jewish community in Forest Hills, Queens. In this segment, Abe Fuzaylov and his mother-in-law Mazal slow things down and tell their stories—about family, memory, food, and what it means to carry a Central Asian Jewish heritage into New York.

Bukharyan Jews once lived for centuries in relative isolation in Central Asia. Today, very few remain there, but the culture is alive and evolving in new places. New York is one of them.
In the broader visit, I toured the neighborhood with Abe from @BukharianBites, visited the restaurant Nadezhda in Queens, and cooked a Chanukah treat called Hushquiliq with Mazal. This video focuses on the conversation itself—the personal history behind the food.

🔗 Follow Abe on Instagram: Bukharian Bites
https://www.instagram.com/bukharianbites/
🔗 Abe on Substack
https://substack.com/@bukharianbites
🔗 Abe on YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/@UCtWCGTdaMOF2eDiSJOXZ7yA

➡️ The short vlog about my trip to Queens to explore this community:
https://youtu.be/m2NT3r7rs20
➡️ My earlier video on Bukharyan Jewish tandoori bread baked in a clay oven:
https://youtu.be/UH3PnRYYquM?si=wZmb88p-6u9WHcLb

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