The University of Michigan Frankel Center for Judaic Studies is pleased to announce that Professor Ayala Fader of Fordham University will deliver the 36th Annual David W. Belin Lecture, titled “Orthodox Jewish Wellness Influencers in the Age of Viral Politics.” This free public event will take place in the Pendleton
Room of the Michigan Union on Thursday, March 26, 2026, with a pre-lecture reception beginning at 5:30 PM. RSVP at https://myumi.ch/15PN8 if you are interested in attending.
Fader is a Professor of Anthropology and Jewish Studies at Fordham University. She is the author of the award-winning books Mitzvah Girls (2009) and Hidden Heretics (2020). We caught up with Professor Fader to get a sneak peek into the themes and questions she’ll be exploring—and why you won’t want to miss this event.
Your upcoming Belin Lecture delves into the world of Orthodox Jewish women wellness influencers. What inspired you to choose this topic, and why is it such a timely conversation now?
I had just published Hidden Heretics: Jewish Doubt in the Digital Age, which examined religious doubt and the internet, when I began research for a new book on Orthodox Jewish responses to infectious disease during the pandemic. In 2022, Orthodox rabbis in New York and New Jersey held a huge rally encouraging women to leave Instagram, which had become a vibrant space for frum women during the pandemic. The rise of frum wellness influencers on Instagram raised all kinds of surprising connections, notably between Orthodox Jewish and conservative Christian women influencers, who shared beliefs around traditional families, bodily sovereignty, and religious freedom. As a long-time ethnographer of Orthodox Jews in New York, I couldn’t resist exploring these topics, which were leading to unexpected - and perhaps unintended - religious affinities.
Beyond Jewish studies concerns, the wellness industry has become a growing economic, political, and social phenomenon in our increasingly politically polarized world. Religious wellness influencers, especially women, play a huge role in the growing challenges to scientific and religious expertise and authority. We need to pay attention to their impact because it affects us all.
Without spoiling the main discoveries, can you share some intriguing questions or challenges you’ll be raising in your lecture?
In the lecture, I’ll analyze my discovery of the similarities and differences between Orthodox Jewish influencers and their conservative Christian counterparts. This leads to questions about how frum influencers are inspired by Christian influencers, where they make religious distinctions, what the points of
affinity are, and where these break down.
More generally, I will show the importance of investigating what I call “interreligious encounters” between Jewish and Christian women. These are the sites where Jewish and Christian women encounter each other, always mediated by social media platforms like Instagram or YouTube. A larger question I’ll pose is what Jewish women wellness influencers can tell us about the position of Jewish Orthodoxy in the rise of contemporary illiberal politics in the United States and globally.
For people unfamiliar with frum wellness influencers, why do you think their presence online is something worth exploring, both academically and personally?
Frum wellness influencers are a new phenomenon, challenging many assumptions about dynamics among Jewish Orthodoxy, gender, and social media. Further, my research shows that frum wellness influencers, along with Christian wellness influencers, are contributing a gendered dimension to a political project: to redefine American religion as public, political, racialized, and biblical, including support for Israel. At the same time, frum influencers navigate an uneasy place in this political project because of rising antisemitism and the ambiguity of race among Orthodox Jews.
I have studied Orthodox Jews, especially Orthodox women, for over twenty-five years. Orthodox Jewish women have continued to fascinate me because they defy so many secular expectations for religious
femininity. At the same time, sharing space and history with Orthodox Jews continues to provoke my own ethical reflection on what it means to be a Jewish woman and how to write about my research.
For those curious about the impact of social media on religious communities, what new insights or perspectives do you hope your lecture will offer?
Research on religion and media has shown that media, broadly conceived, can support or challenge religious authority. The 2026 Belin lecture will demonstrate that social media creates spaces for interreligious encounters, where Jewish and Christian women share social and political goals. This can unintentionally create dialogue and exchange between religious groups with different histories, who explicitly reject each other’s theologies as truth. From the perspective of Jewish studies, this insight points to the importance of studying Jewish Orthodoxy not as bounded, traditional communities, but as a contemporary movement grappling with history and politics today.
Finally, what do you hope people leave thinking about, or maybe even questioning, after attending your lecture?
After my lecture, I hope people will see frum wellness influencers as serious business, reminding us all that politics happen in unexpected places. We should be questioning how Orthodox Jews and conservative Christians are finding affinities, as well as the ethics of how we study these processes. More broadly, I hope to raise questions about religion and the wellness industry. Interreligious encounters show us unexpected positions on health that include vaccine hesitancy, conspiracy theories, and alternative medicine. Frum wellness influencers are an important way that illiberal religion, gender, and media are aligning in new and confounding ways.
