Violin Like That

Violinist Ariella Zeitlin shares thoughts about women performing, authenticity and living life “all in.”

In the Jewish world, it’s very common to play Jewish geography when starting a conversation with someone. In this case, it was more like a short stroll down memory lane. I have known Ariella Zeitlin since she was about 13 years old, and she grew up with my daughter, but that doesn’t make this interview any less exciting. Ariella represents much of what UNORTHOBOXED is about. She’s a young woman who has pursued an incredible career as a violinist and singer, travelling the world, making people happy, and living authentically – sometimes unsure of exactly what that should look like, and occasionally looking back and wondering, “What on earth was I thinking?”

Ariella grew up in a religious home, although during the course of her lifetime her parents have slowly become more and more strictly observant – what Israelis call “Haredi”. This came to a head during her teenage years when she (as she puts it) was “needing to push the boundaries.” So, when she left home at 17 to go to seminary in Israel, she was not keeping Shabbat, but decided to use her experience at seminary as a period of self-rediscovery as she tried to figure out exactly who she was, and what she wanted her Jewish expression to look like. It was during that time that she met her future husband, and so she also started thinking about what she wanted her family to look like in terms of religious observance.