Swinging parties and ayahuasca ceremonies: U.S. Hasidic rebels are redefining Jewish Orthodoxy
Jeans and sneakers on holidays, nonkosher food and sexual and gender liberation – a new generation of ultra-Orthodox Jews in the U.S. is reinventing itself
Illustration: Ofra Eyal. Animation by Shumisat Rasulaeva
Jeans and sneakers on holidays, nonkosher food and sexual and gender liberation – a new generation of ultra-Orthodox Jews in the U.S. is reinventing itself
02:12 PM • January 10 2026 IST
Last Simhat Torah, Riki Rose and a group of her friends rented a space in Brooklyn. They brought a Torah scroll, and drinks and refreshments reflecting the finest kosher cuisine, with generous amounts of kugel and herring. They read from the Torah, using typical Ashkenazi-Haredi inflections, and performed the traditional hakafot – processions with the Torah. Afterward, they rolled the scroll back to the Book of Genesis as is customary, and danced with rare ecstasy in a kabbalistic hitpashteut ha-gashmiyyut, a "shedding of corporeality" (a mystical concept referring to a process of separating from one's body).
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