Marilyn Monroe once sang “Diamonds are a girl’s best friend,” but perhaps she should have added “and siddurim are a Jewish girl’s faithful companion.” Earlier this month, the media exploded (to the tune of 30,000 plus articles!) when news that Monroe’s personal siddur was being auctioned off, but very few people knew the auctioneer is […]

Battling Addiction in Orthodox Jewish Community Means Breaking Through Silence Talking about substance abuse and addiction in the Orthodox Jewish world is a difficult endeavor that Rabbi Zvi Gluck is well acquainted with. He grew up in the ultra-Orthodox neighborhood of Borough Park, Brooklyn and said that, “any insular community likes to remain in their […]

In 2007, I founded Jew in the City with the mission of breaking down stereotypes about religious Jews and offering a humorous, meaningful look into Orthodox Judaism. I was raised with numerous negative ideas about Orthodox Jews, but in my teens, when I actually started meeting them in real life, they were so different than […]

Laughter is an incredibly powerful phenomenon, one that breaks cultural boundaries and allows people all over the world to join together in celebration and happiness. Unfortunately, Orthodox Jews have a tendency to be labeled as lacking a sense of humor or perpetually serious, a notion that could not be further from the truth. Many of […]

Recently, in a school in Israel, a child was hit by a rebbe for “misbehaving.” According Kikar Shabbos News, this older teacher struck the student quite hard and has a history of similar acts of violence against children. The boys’ parents called the police and a complaint was filed against the teacher. It was an awful […]

Hi Jew in the City- Why don’t Orthodox Jews shake hands with members of the opposite sex? Thank you, Lloyd Dear Lloyd- This is a slightly-loaded question in that it makes a number of assumptions and you’re going to meet people who may not live up to those expectations. I agree with the basic premise, […]