In both Jew in the City and my day job, I receive a surprising number of inquiries about conversion. While Judaism accepts converts, we discourage them because taking on Judaism is such a huge commitment. If someone wasn’t born Jewish, they have no obligation to assume all that responsibility. Judaism does not require others to […]

Orthodox Jewish divorce (get) has made many headlines recently, which has caused me – as an Orthodox Jewish woman – to do a lot of thinking about the issue itself and about being a woman in general. A few weeks ago, a group of rabbis were arrested and charged with kidnapping and torturing recalcitrant husbands who […]

There have been several articles written recently in the mainstream media about the poor secular education in parts of the Orthodox Jewish world, particularly in certain Hasidic circles. In one piece, a man from a Hasidic community (who is no longer religious), describes how his secular education was lacking so greatly he was unable to make a […]

The first major league baseball game I attended (I was 11 at the time) was so boring I spent most of the nine innings trying to get the crowd to do “the wave;” the only sports I do enjoy watching on TV are the girly ones (gymnastics and figure skating); and up until recently, I was quite convinced that Lebron James was actually called “James LeBron.”

The idea that the Jewish nation considers itself to be the “chosen people” is something that rubs many people the wrong way. Such a term smacks of elitism and supremacy. Do we Jews really believe that we have some innate quality that makes us a “master race?” Upon examining a famous midrash (a commentary to the Bible based on exegesis, […]