How Orthodox Jews are going viral, and what they really think about TikTok.
If I told you to envision a TikTok content creator, the first thing to come to mind would probably not be an Orthodox Jew—so it may come as a surprise that several Orthodox creators have gone viral on the app.
TikTok, which was originally created in late 2016 by Chinese tech giant ByteDance and began gaining traction in the U.S. in 2017, is known for its extremely short videos (often one minute or less) that are succinctly edited together and often accompanied by catchy background music.
Eighty percent of its users are between the ages of 16 and 34, and the app hosts a small but growing community of Orthodox Jewish posters. Some of these content creators go “viral,” meaning their content becomes widely shared through social media networks and online.
Opinions about the pros and cons of being on TikTok vary widely, although the general consensus is that the app has the ability to serve the Orthodox community in a unique and effective way, but can also be a destructive and even dangerous tool.
When I talked to Allison Josephs, founder and executive director of Jew in the City, a nonprofit launched in 2007 dedicated to improving perceptions of religious Jews within and outside of the Orthodox community, she discussed her concerns about the app, calling TikTok “a vile place” and explaining that she thinks “there’s a lot of really garbage, weird, strange stuff that kids are consuming.” She continued that, although it may have guards put in place against antisemitism, it is not perfect and “becomes a breeding ground for a lot of bad stuff to be spewed.” However, she also called the Orthodox presence on the app “great.”
“I think you have to meet the client where the client is,” she acknowledged, “and if we have a generation that has fallen to the level of consuming so much TikTok, we should have a presence there.”
The owners of the account @thatjinjyjew have a similarly complex philosophy as Josephs when it comes to the pros and cons of the app. Moses and Zippora, a Chasidic couple with nearly 400,000 followers, began creating content after Zippora pointed out to Moses that TikTok represented an opportunity to bring Jews closer to Yiddishkeit. Although Moses, who spoke with me on behalf of the couple, explained that the Internet can be “a window into the sin of the world” and contains “a lot more risk than reward,” he also discussed how valuable the opportunity is for Orthodox Jews to represent themselves on the app: “There’s really no better way to reach the new generation, and even the old generation.” The couple wants to dismantle stereotypes of “the Hollywood-pushed idea that [Orthodox Judaism] is such a restrictive type of life, when really it is so bright and charming.”
Melinda Strauss, a Modern Orthodox Jew who goes by @therealmelindastrauss and has well over 600,000 followers, holds a more positive view of the app than that of Moses and Zippora. She began posting videos educating people about antisemitism—“I felt like, ‘If those few thousand people can hear about antisemitism in a way they might not be learning about it, then I’m doing something good’”—but expanded to answering questions about Orthodoxy and Judaism in general. She said that, although she is careful to not partake in lashon hara, which is a “huge part of social media in general,” she does not think there is any conflict between her values as an Orthodox Jew and her existence on TikTok, because she views her platform as a responsibility to be a “light unto the world.”
A common theme for Orthodox Jews on TikTok is that they have three audiences—religious Jews, non-religious Jews and non-Jews—and although a creator may have a preferred audience, Orthodox TikTokers usually end up catering to all of these communities. For example, although Melinda expected to cater mainly to Jews, to her surprise, her following has always mostly been non-Jewish people, although it also boasts a large variety of Jews. “I teach for anybody who wants to learn more about Judaism,” she explained. “So I’d say my primary audience isn’t Jewish, or is a mix of frum people who just love to follow and be a part of it and learn, or people who aren’t frum who love to learn about Judaism in a way they’ve never learned before.”
Melinda expressed her wish for more Orthodox Jews to join the app, lamenting that people often view TikTok as just “a place for dancing,” or else a hub for antisemitism and negativity, but while acknowledging that these things exist on the platform, she determined that the positives outweigh the negatives: “It’s beautiful to see how people are connecting with different religions and learning about different religions, and we’re creating a space where people can actually learn more about Jews instead of just seeing us as all those antisemitic tropes they’ve learned about … The more Orthodox Jews on the app, the better!”
Anat, a baal teshuva and mother of four who goes by the tag @challahmom and has now garnered over 25,000 followers, sees her primary audience as Jewish mothers, explaining that they represent her stage in life and she feels she is most relatable to them: “I once lived a secular life when my oldest was a young child,” she said. “I know the challenges a secular Jewish mother would face in wanting to bring more Judaism into her home and not knowing how to start.” However, she mentioned that her account has also drawn a lot of attention from non-Jews who frequent the app.
While TikTok can offer a massive platform, it has every type of content one can think of, which allows users to access niche pockets of information but can also subject them to an overwhelming influx of ideas that are antithetical to Jewish values, and the app is also known to be incredibly addictive. Both Moses and Anat cautioned users about impulsively joining TikTok, with Moses warning that TikTok “can be a bottomless pit of scrolling and wasting time,” likening it to driving a car—“you need a license and proper directions”—and Anat alerting people to the rampant antisemitism on the app: “I would say it is exceptionally larger than the other platforms, in that anyone who’s thinking about coming onto these platforms and making content as a Jewish content creator specifically, will need to have very thick skin.”
While antisemitism exists on the app, it is unclear how widespread it is. Melinda’s account went viral after she posted a video in late 2021 featuring her nephew, Izzy, donning tefillin for Shacharit, which received 15.3 million views, 1.3 million likes, and was shared over 14,500 times, but also attracted a surprising number of antisemitic hate comments, many of them Holocaust-themed jokes or attacks, as well as accusations of Izzy being brainwashed.
A TikTok representative wrote in an email to NBC in 2020, a year before Izzy’s tefillin video, that it “stands firmly against antisemitism and doesn’t tolerate hate in any form” and that their team “is fully committed to fostering a community where everyone feels welcome and safe to create. However, an article posted by the ADL last year claimed that TikTok only took problematic content down when prompted, pointing out that blatantly antisemitic content can be found “with only a few taps,” and accusing them of not systematically addressing the issue. In early 2022 TikTok did just that by redirecting antisemitic users to Holocaust education and censoring antisemitic content. It is unclear how much antisemitism lurks in the app nowadays.
Beyond concerns over antisemitism, however, Moses and Anat also both discussed how they believe their values as Orthodox Jews clash with being on the app due to negative secular influences. Anat explained, “The farther you are from traditional or observant Judaism, [the more you become] assimilated and you start referring to your Judaism through Christian eyes.” Moses said that TikTok is a “real window to the world” and cautioned about “the risk of seeing something that can be implanted on a child’s mind forever and ever—videos, music, ideas, ideologies, philosophies, perspectives. Why even put that into your mind?” he asked. “Why even have that window open? Then, alternatively … the reward is that we can reach many Jews, and if you do have a proper structure and filter, you can minimize that risk.”
Sarah Haskell, a Modern Orthodox TikToker in her early 20s, said she sees a lot of value in the app—and unlike both Moses and Anat, does not think her values as an Orthodox Jew clash “at all” with being on TikTok, saying that she thinks that it “[aids] in helping Judaism more than hurting it.” Her account, which has 100,000 followers and is called @thatrelatablejew, has several educational goals: to educate Jews who grew up religious and remind them of the beauty in Judaism in everyday life (as well as showing them that it’s OK to struggle in following halacha); to reach Jews who weren’t raised religiously and have no Jewish education or background; and to reach non-Jews who are curious about her culture. She prefers TikTok’s format because it is more accessible. “You can learn something new about Judaism in one of my videos in a minute.”
Sarah made a great point that many people are unwilling to watch a 30-minute or hour-long YouTube video and may not be educated at all if not for TikTok: “I think TikTok in general makes learning Judaism very accessible because the videos are so short.”
While people can view social media as a “negative tool,” Sarah wants to change this perspective. “Anything in life can be used the wrong way, but we have to choose to uplift the way we use things in life,” she pointed out, saying that TikTok can be a “great tool to educate the public” and show Jews and non-Jews alike the beauty of Judaism. People in her community approach her and thank her for her actions on TikTok, telling her that she is “changing Judaism for the better by showing
it so positively,” and concluded, “If I could even just make one person have a more positive view on Judaism, then I’ve done my job.”
Moses, who has far more reservations about the app, expressed a similar view. Although stressing the importance of mitigating the risks of being on TikTok and informing me that he hadn’t even downloaded the app until about five months ago—before then, Zippora maintained the account by herself—Moses explained, “I’ve had many frum people reach out in many different ways, saying, ‘I didn’t even know that, and we’ve learned so much!’ These are people who’ve gone to traditional observant schools … We learn and study the most from the questions people ask.” He also said that he deems his TikTok presence to be “worth the risk,” explaining that his account’s videos are crucial in “dismantling the taboo of authentic Judaism” and stressing the importance and meaning in “bringing even one Jewish person a little bit more awareness of how great their heritage is.”
All three of the American TikTokers—Melinda, Sarah and Moses—emphasized the significance of self-representation in the face of negative media attention.
Sarah explained that she began to post around the time when “a lot of these Netflix shows were being created about how terrible and toxic Orthodox Judaism is … So many people were so misinformed and they did not have access to seeing someone living their life as a happy Orthodox Jew.”
Moses relayed how he and his wife had turned down media requests from secular organizations, including Netflix, expressing how the agenda of the media differs from the “frum perspective” and that he and his wife are “very concerned about the editing process, the goals and missions of journalists and the media in general.”
Melinda said, “A lot of hatred comes from ignorance … people look at us in a certain way because of how we’re portrayed in the media and because these Netflix shows make all Orthodox Jews out to be evil.” Having her own platform allows her to show people “the beautiful sides of Judaism and not just all the antisemitic stuff that they’ve been learning. People are … able to support us in a way they never were able to before. You hear someone say a slur and you’re able to go, ‘Excuse me, that’s not OK to say,’ because now they understand that it’s wrong.”
By Brooke Schwartz
