Several years ago during a holiday visit to my in-laws, I was in desperate need of can-openage, and my nephew, who was six at the time, was kind enough to show me where the household can opener resided. Although I’d been successfully opening cans for close to twenty years at the point, something about this […]

My paternal grandfather’s family assimilated so long ago that my great-great-grandmother used to spoil my grandfather by sneaking him pork chops in place of veal chops! Only one of my four grandparents was raised religious – my mother’s father. But like the rest of my recent ancestors, he too walked away from the ways of […]

“Whoever isn’t vaccinated is a murderer” reads a rabbinic letter recently signed by leading charedi rabbis in Israel, according to Yeshiva World News. The kol koreh was distributed after a spread of Measles in the ultra-Orthodox communities in Israel and around the world. Earlier this month an unvaccinated infant died, and more than 1300 people […]

I don’t remember exactly when I first learned about “shelo asani isha,” but I have to imagine that I wasn’t too happy about it. There is a section of the siddur called birkas hashachar (morning blessings), which is recited every morning by observant Jews. One of the blessings within birkas hashachar is said by men and blesses God for having not […]

Dear Jew in the City, I recently read your article on faith, but this is where things get a bit fuzzy for me: “If reason and discernment are necessary in guiding our emunah, what pushes me towards belief (and trust) in God? When I look at the complexity of nature and cosmology; when I see certain […]

Dear Minnie- I am the founder and director of Jew in the City, a non-profit which reverses negative associations about religious Jews by highlighting an approach based on kindness, tolerance, sincerity, and critical thinking and makes engaging and meaningful Orthodox Judaism known and accessible. I discovered you, with the rest of the world, in 1997 […]