n one of the most highly anticipated episodes of “Oprah’s Next Chapter,” the former queen of daytime sat down with Hasidic Jews who have never watched her legendary talk show before.
Oprah traveled to Brooklyn for the OWN show, which features her talking to public figures and private families. The episode, titled “America’s Hidden Culture,” looks inside the “usually private and mysterious way of life” of Hasidic Jews.
Aron and Shterna Ginsberg, a Hasidic couple who have raised their children without television, invited Oprah into their home. Oprah and Shterna built great rapport, sharing an “a-ha moment” and discussing Shterna’s wig. “Very good wig,” Oprah marveled.
She spoke candidly with Shterna and other Hasidic women about not having physical contact with their husbands in public, and other aspects of their sex lives. Shterna joked that stringent couples have sex “only by fax, and then the more stringent only by email.”
Oprah also sat down with the Ginsbergs’ nine children for a traditional meal of gefilte fish, matzo ball soup, potato kugel and challah bread. She was shocked to learn that they had never heard of today’s most famous pop icons. “You don’t know who Beyonce is?” she asked. “Oh my goodness.”
She said that it was an interview she had been trying to do “for years and years and years,” and wanted to know why the Ginsbergs had decided to allow cameras into their home. Aron cited Oprah’s “values and ideals” as the reason. “Even though we’re of different faiths, I think we have a lot more in common than we have different,” Shterna added.
Oprah also sat down with Dinah Abrahamson and her children, Sarah and Yosef, one of few black Hasidic families. “Black Hasidic Jews — I didn’t know y’all existed,” she said. The final half of the two-part show airs on Monday night at 10 p.m.
