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, […]

Hey JITC- Why do Orthodox Jewish men have sidecurls? Thanks, Ivan Dear Ivan- Thanks for your question. Those sidecurls are called “peiyot” in Hebrew, meaning corners. This is commonly Yiddishized as “peiyes” and is usually rendered in English in a variety of less-phonetically-accurate spellings, including “payes” and “peyot.” (By the way, the common English-language term […]