My family didn’t know any Orthodox Jews personally was I was growing up, but we knew “of” them. They were “extreme,” “closed-minded,” and “chauvinistic.” Then, when I was 16, I met some for the first time up close, and something surprising happened. These people were educated, open-minded, and kind. The women were empowered and the […]
Sometimes a complete stranger will send a message to one of our platforms and beg me to cut my wig. Which is always so surprising because I can’t help but wonder: Shouldn’t someone who begs another person to cut one of her belongings at least meet her first? Thankfully, we now have staff in place to screen […]
This past Friday night I did something I haven’t done in twenty years. I drove a car on Shabbos. Wait, wait – it’s not what you think. I had an infection in my arm that my doctor told me to watch closely. He gave me an antibiotic to treat it. If it got worse he said […]
When I was 13 years old, my family took our first trip to Israel. We were not the least bit observant in those days. It was the first time I ate kosher food for a sustained period (by default), the first time I saw a mechitzah (divider) when we when to the Kotel, and the first time […]
When one person hurts another, even if she did so unintentionally, she should still apologize. That’s why I’ve decided to write this post. Because I didn’t understand the pain that some people who grew up Orthodox experienced until pretty recently, and not understanding made me not sensitive enough. During my proud secular Jewish childhood, I […]
Jew in the City was created to counter stereotypes that non-Orthodox Jews have about the Orthodox community, but several years into our work, we discovered that some of the ex-hasidic community had been following us and wanted to connect with the kind of Orthodoxy we were showing. From there, Makom was formed. This video kicked […]
