The Jews Who Saved Monticello Thomas Jefferson is buried at Monticello, his estate in Charlottesville, Virginia, along with Rachel Phillips Levy, a traditional Jew. How did a Jewish grave end up in Monticello? The answer lies in the history of a family whose own story is every bit as American as that of Jefferson himself. […]

  Wearing Skirts Over Pants Helps Me Straddle Two Worlds Orthodox young women, many of whom traditionally wear only skirts outside the house as an expression of modesty, increasingly wear pants under those skirts. This gateway between the world of skirts and the world of pants — clothing items that, for some Orthodox Jews (though […]

  Read The Groundbreaking Orthodox Film Story That’s Now An Award Finalist The Haredi world is generally viewed as an insular patriarchal community that shuns movies, but a fledgling, shadow film industry has been growing quietly for a decade within the confines of this improbable universe. These flicks — dozens of them — are produced, […]

  The Grape Juice Wars of Passover Orthodox Jews bless and drink a cup of wine three times on the Sabbath and four times at each of the two Seders for Passover. The almost 150-year-old American titan of grape juice: Welch’s, whose name is practically a synonym for grape juice, and the 129-year-old Manischewitz, the […]

Inside Israel’s Only Glatt Kosher Art Gallery In a public bomb shelter is the Art Shelter Gallery, the only gallery in Israel, and presumably in the world, that operates in a Haredi neighborhood and that is deemed appropriate for that public. Meet the artists and curators seeking to vitalize Haredi art world, and if possible, […]

  Hasidic Rapper Melts Faces of Average New Yorkers These guys were skeptical to say the least, but rapper Sammy K threw down some serious flow. They changed their minds immediately. Laugh, For God’s Sake: The Dos and Don’ts of Ultra-Orthodox Stand-up Comedy So what’s the deal with kaparot, anyway? Orthodox Jewish stand-up comics are […]