Sacred Whores
Between the wellness market and the sex trade, a new class of priestess is selling the sacred by the hour.
Orli Santo
NYC Originals: New York's unsung heroes
Hi, I'm Orli Santo, a Brooklyn-based freelance journalist. I report, in English and Hebrew, on New York's offbeat subcultures and hidden economies; sex, kink and the body; the human side of AI; and the Jewish and Israeli-American street. Fifteen years in, I've been a staff reporter and Israeli-American correspondent for The New York Jewish Week, with features in SMATTER, Vice, The Daily Beast, The Times of Israel, JTA and +972 Magazine. As a multinational immigrant I know both the struggle and the potential in the "outsider" label, and I write to translate complex realities into simple, compelling narrative.
Sexuality, gender and the body
Alternative sexualities, subcultures and hidden economies.
NYC + Jewish press
Local NYC, Jewish and Israeli-American news
Death Defying Tags
The Rise Of Rappelling Graffiti
Negotiating A Rosh HaShanah Dinner Coalition
Assembling a holiday table across political fault lines, where passing the brisket takes the diplomacy of a ceasefire negotiator.
For Israeli-Americans, An Identity Crisis At The Polls
Seven hundred Israeli-Americans cast absentee ballots at the consulate. For some, the hyphen itself was the hard part.
Israeli Americans On A Teetering Bridge
Yoav Gal does not fit in. A Park Slope composer whose support for Israel's hard-right government puts him at odds with his left-leaning Israeli-American friends.
Israeli-Americans Now Have A Voice — Are They All On Key?
Just a few short years ago, Israeli-Americans were a constituency without a voice, standing at an uncomfortable remove from the wider Jewish community.
Bringing The Holocaust Home — Literally
The day before the official Yom HaShoah ceremony at Temple Emanu-El, 25 Israeli-Americans marked it in an Upper East Side living room.
Israeli-Americans’ New Normal: ‘Inbetweenish’
Ma nishtana? For the Israeli-American community, pretty much everything. A decade ago, there was no such thing as an Israeli-American community.
Cornelia Street Marks Israeli Jazz Presence
From Anat Cohen at the Village Vanguard to a monthly spotlight at Cornelia Street Café, Israeli jazz claims its corner of the Village.
Heavy Metal
Fifteen years ago, a suicide bomber carrying 15 pounds of explosives laced with bullets and metal scraps grabbed Omer Golan from behind — and blew them both up.
On Surge Of Asylum Seekers, Israel Caught In A Bind
Israel, like other Mediterranean and European countries, is a magnet for asylum seekers escaping forced, open-ended conscription in Eritrea or war in Sudan.
How Freedom of Speech Was Crushed During Protective Edge
A running tally of the 2014 Gaza war's quieter casualty: dissent. Beatings, firings, and legislation aimed at silencing Israelis who dared to object.
Minds And Machines
Features about AI's defining questions
A Three-Body Problem: The day the *will of an AI became a matter of national security
*”Will” isn’t the right term for whatever AI has in place of volition. But the fact that no such term exists has become its own problem.
What Would Claude Do?
Mimicking a chatbot to feel closer to humans
Strange Bedfellows
The side effects of treating a tool as potentially conscious