- By Shailvee Tiwari
- Tue, 18 Nov 2025 11:04 AM (IST)
- Source:JND
There’s a small corner of the world where life still moves at a calmer pace, no endless scrolling, no buzzing notifications, no pressure to stay online 24/7. And surprisingly, this place exists right in the middle of Brooklyn. A recent Instagram video by tour guide Frieda Vizel has opened a window into this lifestyle, showing how many Hasidic Jews choose to stay connected without letting technology take over their days. The clip begins with a woman casually chatting on a flip phone, but Vizel quickly points out something interesting: this isn’t just any flip phone.
She says, “This is not an ordinary flip phone. It’s a special phone called a kosher phone.” According to her, these phones are designed with limits, not to reject technology, but to control how much space it gets in daily life. As she explains, “many religious Jews try to use the internet with limits. They’re not against the internet, but it’s very different to have the internet on you all the time."
Instead of carrying the internet around in their pockets, many people in this community prefer to use it only at work or on desktops at home. One big reason behind this choice, Vizel says, is to make sure parents “remain present” for their kids and don’t get distracted by constant online activity.
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But the idea doesn’t stop at phones. Vizel talks about other “kosher” gadgets too, cameras without cloud features, MP3 players that don’t need iTunes or Wi-Fi, and independent GPS devices instead of apps like Waze or Google Maps. There are even Game Boys with no violent games and kosher Teslas that come with restricted internet access. For children, the rules are even simpler. Most of them don’t carry any phone at all, which means they end up spending hours playing outside, just like kids did years ago.
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In her caption, Vizel summed it all up by calling it “The amazing world of kosher technology, especially kosher phones, an innovative world of Hasidic Jews." And the internet had plenty to say; some admired the idea, while others were surprised at how different life can look when technology is kept at arm’s length.
"I’m not Jewish and I want this! The way it’s supposed to be. I’m older than Google and Facebook and I remember a time when parents were present. Gen X! Love this!" a user wrote. "This was very eloquently explained. My son had a tablet that consumed him, so I sent it to his dad’s house.. Now we actually communicate after school," a second user wrote.
"I wish in our modern-day society, our kids had childhoods like these kids. It’s so much healthier physically and emotionally than being on screens all the time," wrote a third user. "So cool!!! I love your content so much! I'd like one of these phones," added a fourth user. "These would be great for kids. Years ago, we bought an MP3 player that had no Internet access so you would have to pre-load any music and movies from a PC," wrote another user.