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Episode 16 - "A Year in Mea Shearim" with Tuvia Tenenbom
Episode 16 - "A Year in Mea Shearim" with Tuvia Tenenbom
Jan 2, 2025
1:00:41
Tuvia Tenenbom is quite a colorful character. An author, playwright, mathematician, computer scientist, and all-around polymath, Tuvia was raised in a chareidi Israeli home, in the lap of the Chazon Ish, Rav Shach and other great luminaries. His own life veered on a different course, but he recently returned to those ideological precincts, spending a year in Mea She’arim, Jerusalem, fully immersed in the local community. The product of his embedded travels is the book, “Careful, Beauties Ahead: My Year with the Ultra-Orthodox,” an honest and largely flattering portrayal of his time in an otherwise closed society. Tenenbom highlights many of the gifts - fervent religiosity, principled living, embrace of charity and family - that animate chareidi life, yet which so few Israeli “outsiders” ever learn about, much less witness. In an era of intense polarization,Tenenbom’s tome is a reminder that, for all the critique and calls for chareidi reform, the core values must be preserved, radiating out towards the entire Jewish nation, and beyond.