Good friends from Toronto just moved to Israel. Nearly two years exactly to the date of our own move. As you can imagine, we haven’t had a lot of friends visiting in the last couple of years, so just seeing them and spending time together brought a little piece of Toronto home. We took them [...]
Author: Sarit Steinfeld
I was born in Israel and grew up in Toronto. I'm a writer at heart and a few years ago I started blogging about the experience of being Jewish in the modern world.
My work has been featured on the Times of Israel and the Orthodox Union Magazine.
Our Move: The 10-Month Mark
I can’t say this move has been ordinary. But nothing is these days. Irrespective of a pandemic wreaking havoc on the world, on the micro level, there have been some notable events that have gone on in the past few weeks… From Summer Heat to Smoked Meat For one, we survived a massive heatwave, with [...]
Our Move: The Six Month Mark
It’s been six months since our move to Israel, and obviously things got interesting in the last couple of months. Israel took a pretty strong stance on handling Corona, but it seems that most places around the world have since caught up and we are now all in the same boat. Over here, it’s currently [...]
What It’s Like Watching the Netflix TV Miniseries ‘Unorthodox’ as a Modern Orthodox Jew
I just finished watching Unorthodox on Netflix. Didn’t take long as it’s only four episodes. If you haven’t seen it yet, it’s a miniseries about a young woman who leaves behind the insular Hasidic Satmar community of Williamsburg and begins a new life in Berlin, loosely based on a true story. I have to say, [...]
Israel Takes on Coronavirus – and I’m All for It!
Israel is taking drastic measures to combat Coronavirus. In a nutshell: Ban on gatherings of over 10 people. All schools, malls, gyms, and restaurants are closed. Workplaces are opting to work from home. And quarantined corona patients are being tracked by some device that we all knew Israel already had. Violators may face prison. It’s eerie enough as [...]
Hair Covering and the Choices We Make
From the moment I covered my hair, I didn’t connect with it. I would look in the mirror with my wig on and couldn’t relate to myself. So I opted for hats. But with hats, I always felt hidden. Like it was a barrier between me and the rest of the world. I agonized for [...]
Our Move: The Three Month Mark
We recently hit our 3-month mark since our move to Israel. Whereas our first weeks in Israel were spent running around navigating Israeli bureaucracy, the last little bit has been focused on settling into our new life, i.e., meeting new people and starting to look for jobs (although I’m kind of loving this new semi-retirement [...]
A Teapot Tells a Story
I wrote this post in honour of International Holocaust Remembrance Day (January 27, 2020) in memory of Zvi's grandparents and as a tribute to the courage of every survivor to start over and rebuild our nation. This post was published on The Times of Israel.My husband’s grandfather was a Holocaust survivor. He was liberated from [...]
Here We Are
In 2016, I was sitting in my masters class eagerly awaiting a guest speaker that had come in to discuss Canada’s approach to foreign policy. Around that time, Canadians had swung their long-standing Conservative Harper votes to the Liberal Trudeau government. As I sat among my peers of fellow future policy advisors in what is [...]
Our first weeks in Israel
We are six weeks into our move to Israel. Here are the highlights in a nutshell. Israeli Bureaucracy It’s everything you’ve heard about, and more. You book an appointment on a super advanced app only to arrive at a location that no longer exists. When you get to the right place, the lines can be [...]
The Modern Yid 