“I don’t believe the superstition that it brings good luck, but I eat black-eyed peas on New Year’s Day. It’s tradition for my family,” my yoga instructor said. “What do you eat?” (Keep scrolling for the video version of this...
Progressive activists and social scientists talk constantly about advocating for and working with communities in a way that neither demonizes them nor romanticizes them, that neither fetishizes them nor mocks them (check out UC Berkeley’s resource list on...
The Amish religion falls under the umbrella of Christianity, and within that, it is an offshoot of Anabaptism. Anabaptists are a subset of Protestants who believe baptism at birth to be immoral. They emphasize that baptism should not occur until one can make the...
In another post, I shared an excerpt from the chapter “The Cat Knew the Way” in my memoir, Amish Girl in Manhattan. It’s about one of my earliest memories: trekking off to the blackberry patch in the neighbor’s woods when I was 6 years old....
The US Supreme Court Case Wisconsin v. Yoder, decided in 1972, ruled that compulsory high school education was not required for those whose religious beliefs did not support a full education, in this instance being the Amish. This case has allowed hundreds of children...
The Amish––an insular, underserved minority population living in approximately 30 states across rural America––adhere to a turn-of-the-century life. If you find yourself on some of the country roads in Lancaster County, PA, one of the largest traditional practicing*...