Episode 16 - "A Year in Mea Shearim" with Tuvia Tenenbom
Description
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.
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