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Podcast: North Star with Ellin Bessner
Episode: This new Canadian podcast examines why Hasidic Jews leave their communities to go 'off the derech'
Description: Naomi Seidman's father, Hillel, was a descendant of a Hasidic dynasty. Despite her family heritage and religious schooling in New York, Seidman eventually left her home and community, forging a new relationship with Judaism and enjoying a successful career in academia. She now teaches at the University of Toronto.
She wants you to know that, while not often talked about, there is a sizeable community of people like her in Canada and the United States—formerly ultra-Orthodox Jews who went "off the derech," as they say. To share their stories, she teamed up with the Shalom Hartman In...