Partying Like It’s 400 BCE
If you’d been wandering around East London on March 14th, you might have thought you’d fallen down a rabbit hole. Characters from Alice in Wonderland mingled with men in tutus, and menacing masked guards from Squid Game chatted to couples clad in neon 80s-style Lycra. In fact, you’d have found yourself at GesherEU’s annual Purim […]
GesherEU’s Residential Weekend Away 2025
GesherEU’s annual residential weekend is now the highlight of our calendar – a chance for members and their families to get together, have fun, share their experiences, and build community. This year’s weekend away was the most successful – and largest – ever. It took place between 14th and 17th February in its usual venue, […]
GesherEU’s 2024 Year in Review
2024 was an exciting year for GesherEU. This is what we’ve been up to…
Pini on the Roof
GesherEU’s very own Pini Brown is the star of a brand new documentary short film, which will be shown at the UK Jewish Film Festival this November. ‘Pini on the Roof’ follows Yiddish Blues singer Pini, who left the Hasidic community in Stamford Hill five years ago and is now a mini-celebrity in the hipster […]
Yom Kippur: A Time for Reflection and Renewal
Written and submitted by GesherEU member, Sheya. Yom Kippur is on Saturday. I kind of forgot about it. It was not something my brain was spending energy on. I was reminded by my brother who called, asking to borrow a book. He’s not usually a reader and didn’t explain why. It took me some time […]
Gesher EU’s Summer 2024 Reading List
We asked GesherEU members to recommend books that had resonated with them, whether novels or non-fiction. Here are the top ten
My First Date Was Like A Job Interview
In the Charedi community, people marry at a very young age, and all marriages are arranged. This makes navigating the dating scene a particularly daunting task for those who choose to leave. We spoke to three GesherEU members about their experiences of dating and finding love in the secular world. Motti was not yet 17 […]
‘I LIKE HAVING SOME LEVEL OF AMBIGUITY’
Darren Kraushar, 30 is an intersex trans man, who works as a mathematics lecturer at the University of Utah. He shares his experience of growing up in the Charedi community in Hendon, North London, and how his life has changed since he left. “As a child, I always figured that they’d misidentified my sex at […]
An Unorthodox Approach to Parenting
GesherEU has a new parenting group. We spoke to three members to find out how it helps them. When Jamie* was granted access to see his children for the first time in three years, he was excited to re-establish contact, but had no idea how he would interact with them, after so long apart. “My […]
A Night to Remember
When Emily Green had an idea to create a support group for people who, like her, felt isolated after leaving the Charred community, she did not foresee just how successful it would become. “I knew I was groping in the dark,” she says, “But I was determined that no one would go through this journey […]