As a professional recruiter, the COVID pandemic brought Dovi Halpern’s career to a total standstill. No one was hiring, he recalls. “People thought the world would end tomorrow. I was sitting around with no work to do.” And at that early stage in the pandemic, he also had no shul to go to either. “There […]

I grew up in an authoritarian home in which self-expression in any form was restricted: socially, academically, psychologically, mentally and financially. Not surprisingly, I was taught to be as stringent as humanly possible when it came to being religious. And so I was as “frum” as physically and mentally possible as I made my way […]

Dear Jew in the City- On a recent trip to China I saw Shaolin Monks do all sorts of incredible feats – breaking wood and stone on their bodies and lying on swords. I was told that they do this with chi. Is there a Jewish idea of this? Did the Hasidic masters or other […]

Dear Jew in the City- Is the self-improvement thing during sefirah kind of made up? What do all the middos mean or where do they come from? All the best, TZ Dear TZ- Sefirah is an unusual… I was going to say holiday but it’s not exactly a holiday, is it? It’s something we do […]

“How was your yontiff?” “Great! I made an amazing new recipe from Kosher Kourageous…” “What about you, did you invest in yourself?” “Sure, I got some new clothes.” “What about spiritually?” “Well, I went to shul with the kids to hear the shofar, and I made it through the fast, but you know how it […]

While there have been a spate of stories detailing the lives of those who left Jewish observance, people often wonder, where are the memoirs for those who have returned? Enter award-winning author and humorist Judy Gruen, a passionate ba’alas teshuva whose memoir The Skeptic and the Rabbi: Falling in Love with Faith presents her personal journey, complete with laughs, tears, […]