Published: 31 January 2020
Last updated: 5 March 2024
SITTING IN HER LIVING room in Hillside, New Jersey, talking into an iPhone, Bracha Bard-Wigdor, 32, is schooling Orthodox Jewish women about sex. Instagram is her platform. No filters.
“It is not OK for our children to be learning that men are predators, animals, that they have sexual urges they can’t control as boys,” she said, looking straight into the phone’s camera, pushing a lock of hair from her wig behind her ear.
“What do you think that girl is going to live her life living like? She is going to start thinking that her body is up for grabs, that anyone can touch her.”
She is a birth doula and intimacy coach, and she has 13,000 followers and counting. The evening was a typical one — blunt talk about miscarriages, C-sections, sexual positions and abuse. In a community where sex is reserved for after marriage, and where sex education is still largely non-existent — this sort of Instagram therapy has caught on like fire.
From the kitchens and bedrooms of Crown Heights and Boro Park, NY, Lakewood, NJ, and Kiryas Joel, NY, women are watching her.
FULL STORY The Orthodox intimacy coach, talking about sex on Instagram (Forward)
Illustration: Sefira Lightstone (The Forward
