Lauren Hakimi

Mar 6, 2025 | jta.org | Lauren Hakimi

Back in 2018, rabbi and educator Yossi Overlander was paying $1,500 a month to rent a one-bedroom apartment in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, with his wife and two children. It was hardly an ideal situation. “I was living on the sixth floor of an apartment building with an elevator that was sometimes not working,” Overlander, 32, said, adding that the landlord wouldn’t let him install a washer/dryer in his unit.

Feb 10, 2025 | hellgatenyc.com | Lauren Hakimi

4:04 PM EDT on February 10, 2025 On Saturday morning, I met a group of ten runners in front of the Mr. Kale grocery store in Crown Heights. Some carried running-specific backpacks to distinguish themselves visually from people who have normal, healthy relationships to exercise. Around 10:30, we began a 26.2 mile journey that would put our legs, our moods, and our digestive systems to the test.

Jan 31, 2025 | newvoices.org | Lauren Hakimi

A few years ago, author Shalom Auslander took a weight loss drug so poisonous that later, when he was hospitalized, doctors suspected he had tried to kill himself. Auslander claimed that he hadn’t, but the question remained, what made him hate himself enough to take such a dangerous substance? The answer is the title of Auslander’s latest memoir, Feh, which came out last July from Penguin Random House.

Apr 3, 2024 | shtetl.org | Lauren Hakimi

A Hasidic boy in Williamsburg died by suicide after his father was prevented from attending the boy’s bar mitzvah, the Israeli Haredi news site Kikar Ha-Shabbat reported. The New York Police Department confirmed the boy’s death in an email to Shtetl, saying officers responded to a 911 call and found the 13-year-old boy unconscious and unresponsive on March 20. The New York City Office of Chief Medical Examiner determined the cause of the death to be suicide, according to an email to Shtetl.

Mar 28, 2024 | shtetl.org | Lauren Hakimi

Judges from the New York State Supreme Court Appellate Division heard oral arguments in Albany on Thursday on a case being closely watched across the Haredi world, and which may determine what Haredi schools must teach for years to come. Prior to the session, leaders across a wide spectrum of the Haredi world issued dramatic calls for communities to mark the day with special prayers, seeing in this case an unprecedented threat to the Haredi way of life.