Dear Jew in the City, Are Orthodox Jews allowed to consume alcohol? Thanks, Sam Dear Sam, Thanks for your question, though I really wonder what prompted it. Anyone even passingly familiar with Jewish ritual life would be aware that wine plays a regular role in it. We usher Shabbos in and out with kiddush and havdalah […]

When you think of Kansas, you may think of cornfields, cows, rainbows and a young girl with a blue checkered dress trying to get back home. For Chani and Mendel Kleyman though, it was the backdrop for their love story. Mendel Kleyman was 23 when he decided he was ready to start dating. He was […]

  This Sunday begins the joyful minor holiday of Tu b’Av, the fifteenth of the month of Av. The Talmud says besides Yom Kippur, there was no other holy day as happy for the Jews as Tu b’Av. In the times of the Temple, unmarried Jewish women would dress in white and dance in the vineyards, […]

Tisha B’Av – the ninth day of the month of Av – is usually the saddest day of the Jewish calendar, a day of fasting and mourning the destruction of both Temples in Jerusalem, among other tragedies. But last year, our family’s Tisha B’Av was far from solemn. Late in June, my husband, Daniel, received […]

Dear Jew in The City, How should we respond to Iran’s threat of war on Tisha B’Av? Sincerely, Yosefa – Dear Yosefa, Thanks for your question. This is a very serious matter, so I’m going to play against type this time by not cracking any jokes. Tisha b’Av is a day of communal mourning. On […]

This Shabbos, the one preceding Tisha b’Av, is known as “Shabbos Chazon” – the Shabbos of the vision. Whose vision? The prophet Isaiah, who saw the destruction that would befall the Jewish people because of the way we baselessly hated one another. The great Rav Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev would say: On the Shabbos of […]