The Frieda Vizel Podcast

Video link: https://youtu.be/xBBW-b4yNfw

Gita got married, like many Hasidic Williamsburg girls did. In an arranged match, when she was not yet twenty. Her marriage lasted until death did them part. Decades together, seven children, forty grandchildren, and about as many great-grandchildren. What does it mean for a woman of such a traditional, pious world to lose her husband, the backbone of her life and family? Gita is a story of resilience, everlasting love, and the language to express it all through food. From her shabbos morning coffee on the porch, from where she watches young families, to her choice to have peanut butter bread for shabbos lunch, to her refusal to let her kids cook for her, she remains fiercely independent, deeply traditional, and eternally devoted to her family through food. In a world where tradition is lived through food, Gita shares her family tradition of eating Rakot Crumpli: packed potatoes. A Hungarian food of sliced potatoes and eggs, with heaps of "dairy goodies" - cottage cheese, sour cream, and lots of butter. 

Join Gita and me for a day in her home of cooking Rakot Crumpli and learning about her life and world as a widow in the Hasidic community. About her struggles with chronic illness and how she lives life fully despite her mobility issues and need to get around with a Rollator. Her resilience and love for life is inspiring, her fashionista side is envy-inducing. Most of all, she laughs and makes you laugh. She's alone but not lonely.

This is my second time with Gita. My first visit was an interview about her life story which you can watch here:

https://youtu.be/2saQ0LEwZXQ
~~ Filmed by me. How did I do? Do you prefer professional videography or more intimate home made filming?
~~ Edited by the wonderful Lee Kupac https://readymag.website/u3245558506/6471652/

I've interviewed the cooking influencer Lovina Zook:
https://youtu.be/GHF0lQS2CHs

Check out another story of an inspiring widow from Williamsburg, Tova Schiff:
https://youtu.be/O2eglqRL5n4

Check out Mr Klein's shop where you can buy Rakot Crumpli
https://youtube.com/shorts/KHnzQ5l674s?feature=share

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-frieda-vizel-podcast--5824414/support.

Video link to this interview: https://youtu.be/LV99eySK-24

Fifteen years after their marriage was arranged, a couple reflects on their lives together. They met once for forty minutes and then got married a year later, without any contact during the engagement. Are they happily married? In hindsight, what do they take away from their way of having met? 

🔗 Follow Brachi and Avi on instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brachif/
🔗 Brachi's Shabbos table decor business is here: https://hod-hadar.com/
🔗 Hod Hadar Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hod_hadar_/

Did you enjoy this interview? Watch some of my others:
🌟 Eli's story: https://youtu.be/SggvtB586Gk
🌟 Pessy's story: https://youtu.be/7CBHWJwmAJI
🌟 Gita's story: https://youtu.be/xBBW-b4yNfw
🌟 Melissa Weisz's story: https://youtube.com/live/j16Dlc5iRGo
Edited by Lee Kupac / https://www.instagram.com/alice.kpc

As always, my interviews are available as podcasts wherever you get your podcasts.
Thank you for supporting my work!!

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-frieda-vizel-podcast--5824414/support.

Link to video version of this interview: https://youtu.be/7CBHWJwmAJI

Many people know Pessy from her popular Yiddish comedy videos, where she lovingly and hilariously captures the world of Hasidic women. She was one of the first creators to bring that world to social media through a female lens, and her sharp observations and humor have earned her a devoted following.

But behind the comedy is a remarkable personal story.
Pessy grew up in a Hasidic family in Monsey and spent much of her childhood carrying responsibilities that no child should have to carry. As the oldest sister, she watched her family struggle through the challenges surrounding her younger sister and felt an overwhelming need to hold everything together. She learned early on that being "good" and "perfect" seemed to be the safest way to survive difficult circumstances.

In our conversation, Pessy speaks with extraordinary honesty about family, faith, rejection, and the pressure she felt to meet everyone's expectations. She shares how religion became a source of comfort, how she entered marriage determined to be the perfect wife, and how she concealed her own struggles because she didn't want to burden the people she loved.

What makes Pessy's story so powerful is not simply what happened to her, but the way she reflects on it. She brings insight, humor, and compassion to experiences that could easily have left her bitter. Her story touches on themes that are deeply personal and yet almost universal: the desire to be accepted, the weight of responsibility, the loneliness of feeling misunderstood, and the long journey toward self-acceptance.

Pessy's story is, in many ways, everyone's story. I hope you'll watch this conversation with kindness and an open heart.
You can find Pessy on Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/pessyunstressing/

You might also enjoy some of my other interviews with women from the Yiddish-speaking Hasidic community:
Melissa Weisz
https://youtube.com/live/j16Dlc5iRGo
Fradel Neuman
https://youtu.be/HoTzWaF7dU8
Sara Braun
https://youtu.be/1E54wVSn-wM
Gita Katz
https://youtu.be/2saQ0LEwZXQ

As always, my interviews are also available in audio-only form wherever you get your podcasts.
And thank you especially to my channel members for helping make these conversations possible.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-frieda-vizel-podcast--5824414/support.

Video link to this episode: https://youtu.be/ixZOxV5BuCI

Eddy Portnoy is back by popular demand, after our wonderful discussion on the history of Yiddish language. Eddy is the exhibit curator at YIVO Institute for Jewish Research and does amazing Yiddish/Jewish curations.

Today’s subject is juicy but educational, eye-opening, and enlightening.
We are diving into the shocking and largely forgotten story of the National Desertion Bureau, a real organization founded in New York in 1911 to track down runaway Jewish husbands who abandoned their wives and children during the great wave of Jewish immigration from Eastern Europe to North America.

For more on this below.

Here are some links:
-My previous interview with Eddy: https://youtu.be/tq8y3KkAWTk?si=-KdfW3UJBkiMdrh_
-The Yivo Exhibit: https://www.yivo.org/National-Desertion-Bureau
-📘 THE BOOK ON THIS: Wives without Husbands: Marriage, Desertion, and Welfare in New York, 1900–1935 by Anna R. Igra https://amzn.to/4tGvhbZ

Popular stereotypes about Jewish husbands tend to be flattering: loyal, hardworking, stable, family-oriented. Which is exactly why so many people have never heard of this dark social crisis that unfolded inside immigrant Jewish communities during the early 20th century. Behind the romanticized image of the immigrant success story was another reality entirely: crushing poverty, overcrowded tenements, fractured families, emotional collapse, and men disappearing without a trace.

The problem became so widespread that Yiddish newspapers like the legendary The Forward published daily columns called “The Gallery of Missing Husbands,” complete with mugshots and descriptions of men who vanished and left their families destitute. There were even Lower East Side psychics who specialized in helping women locate missing husbands.
From 1905 through the 1960s, the National Desertion Bureau investigated more than 18,000 cases, working with courts, police departments, charities, and governments to track down deserters, force support payments, and sometimes even jail offenders. The surviving files read like tragic little novellas filled with betrayal, desperation, ruined finances, abandoned children, and impossible choices made during an era of massive upheaval.

The archives at YIVO Institute for Jewish Research contain roughly 17,000 surviving case files from the Bureau, many of which formed the basis for the exhibition *Runaway Husbands, Desperate Families: The Story of the National Desertion Bureau*, curated by Eddy himself.
In this episode, Eddy walks us through this extraordinary hidden chapter of Jewish history and helps unpack what these stories reveal about immigration, masculinity, poverty, shame, survival, and the fragile reality behind nostalgic immigrant mythology.

Before we begin, I want to thank those of you who are channel members and help make this work possible. Members get early access to videos before they are released publicly. I deeply appreciate all of you, members, subscribers, commenters, and everyone who participates in these conversations and helps keep this channel alive.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-frieda-vizel-podcast--5824414/support.

Video link to this conversation: https://youtu.be/KCS9vAundms

How do you tell the history of Jews in Poland? Why is there so much debate about this from Polish people? I ask the curator of the Polin museum about her work at the crux of this debate: when telling the story of Polish Jewish history for the museum. 

Watch part 1 for Barbara's life story here: https://youtu.be/xXqmG4rI-sE

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-frieda-vizel-podcast--5824414/support.