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 actually a Jehovah’s Witness Kingdom Hall.

Miriam was one of the people attending services there.

In this conversation, Miriam shares what it was like to grow up inside the Jehovah’s Witness community: the rules, the rhythms of daily life, the sense of belonging, and the limitations placed on childhood, education, and social life. We talk about her memories of the Kingdom Hall in Kiryas Joel, the wider culture of Jehovah’s Witnesses, and what it meant; emotionally and psychologicall... to leave such a structured religious world.

This interview is also about what comes after leaving: identity, belief, grief, freedom, and the slow work of figuring out who you are when the framework you grew up in falls away.
As someone deeply interested in religious subcultures, exit narratives, and the sociology of faith, this conversation felt especially meaningful.... almost like closing a loop that began when I was a child in my Shabbos dress, waving at strangers I didn’t yet understand.

Topics we cover include:

-Growing up as a Jehovah’s Witness
-Family life, schooling, holidays, and missionizing
-The Kingdom Hall in Kiryas Joel and Miriam’s memories of it
-Community, ritual, and belonging
-Leaving a high-control religious environment
-The emotional and psychological impact of exiting
-Spiritual life and identity after leaving
-Reflections on religion, culture, and comparison with other faith communities

Want more?

Watch my video about the Jehovah's Witness Church in Kiryas Joel
https://youtu.be/naUJMITJ5sY

Watch my interview with Martha Ross, who left the Amish:
https://youtu.be/teadpfXWCO4

My own recounting of what it's like to grow up in Kiryas Joel
https://youtu.be/uHu_17N9GdE
The story of Anna Shternshis:
https://youtu.be/hKN0_75EuqE
Stay tuned for more stories of subcultures and religious groups.


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

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

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/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 speaks not only about fear and shock, but about what came after. He recalls the night following the attack, sitting at home with his family, shaken and uncertain, and consciously turning toward faith rather than retreat. Drawing deeply on the teachings of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, he describes an approach rooted in responsibility, hope, and the idea of being a messenger to spread light, especially after darkness.

This is a testimony shaped by loss and danger, but also by profound optimism, a belief that light is not passive and that faith asks something active of us, even in the most fragile moments.

Rabbi Yosef Eichenblatt on Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/mindfulrabbi/

Video from the day of the attack:
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DSR06KeEg2i/


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

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.

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

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 unable to appear on camera, so their voices are heard anonymously, paired with carefully staged reenactments performed by actors. A very unusual method of storytelling. In the shorter version published in the New York Times in December 2025, the actors were totally removed.


📰 Here is a shorter version of this story appeared in The New York Times:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/02/opinion/ultra-orthodox-jewish-wedding-night.html
🎥 Here is the full extended documentary The Wedding Night can be watched here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lOnex1o5h8&t=5s
🎬 Instagram link to filmmaker: Rachel Elitzur
https://www.instagram.com/elitzurachel/

This film connects to broader conversations I’ve explored on this channel about sex, intimacy, silence, and expectation in Orthodox and Hasidic communities:

• How Hasidic teens learn about sex
https://youtu.be/Gk917OpgS_Q
• My own painful experience leaving an arranged marriage
https://youtu.be/GvLO9Vhid44
• An intimacy coach shares delicate, rarely voiced perspectives
https://youtu.be/AUdw8W71Gv8
• Pearl, a Hasidic woman, speaks about her own and her children’s matchmaker marriages
https://youtu.be/yQ_GgbC9RD4

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

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.

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

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

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.