What is The Black Coat?
The Black Coat chronicles my exploration of romance and sexuality as I was transitioning from Hassidic rabbi to ordinary human. Too often, this tender and messy journey is left out of the conversation. My goal is to make it relevant. To shed taboos around sexuality and romance, especially as it relates to the all too often a-sexualized narrative around Hassidic culture. Not as a fetish or oddity but simply as an ordinary human.
“I am just a boy standing in front of a girl asking her to love me.” I watched Julia Roberts recite those lines to Hugh Grant on a plane flying across the Atlantic when I was fifteen years old. I fantasized about having my own Notting Hill moment, knowing it would likely never come to pass. This didn’t frustrate me because that would mean I believed a different reality was possible.
Over the last few years, I’ve been lucky to have many Notting Hill moments. Messy ones, beautiful ones, and painful ones. All of them tender and sincere in their desire to explore, discover, and absorb this beautiful life we are given.
Thank you for reading and I hope you find these stories interesting if not meaningful and illuminating.
The Black Coat
