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

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.