Video version of this posting: https://youtu.be/uHu_17N9GdE

I grew up in a very special place: the Hasidic village of Kiryas Joel. It was beautiful and painful all at once. I don't always talk about my own experience in this channel, because I was always careful not to make this channel about me per se but about a larger anthropological project. But today I'm taking a bit of a detour to a personal narrative by reading to you an essay I wrote about what it's like to grow up in Kiryas Joel. I hope you may find in this a careful expression of my many complicated and warm emotions towards my childhood world.

You can read the original essay on my blog here: https://friedavizel.com/2022/02/23/what-it-is-like-to-grow-up-in-kiryas-joel/

~For more content on Kiryas Joel, check out my watch party of a drive through Kiryas Joel: https://youtu.be/baiYc_9ZDt8?si=BWDRwZy1B_OesyUs

~And my interview with the filmmaker Jesse Sweet about a documentary on Kiryas Joel: https://youtu.be/Ovl9HbcTuUI?si=J7lnv6zHv3V4WhS2

~A very personal trip from NYC up to the green mountainous region, including a stop on Satmar Drive where I grew up. https://youtu.be/-JzYNs1HfLY?si=4zfcYW5H_8D7W4B9

~I also have an even more personal essay (would you believe it?) adapted to video here: https://youtu.be/LpW30oZh9rY?si=tQGdirASdT43RVnZ