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, […]
EDITOR’S NOTE: This article handles mature topics and is the first of a two part series. This installment broaches the topic from a philosophical standpoint, the second part will discuss the practical how-to’s of speaking to your son. Sitting down with your son to discuss how to interact with the opposite sex as he reaches […]
The Manischewitz at my family’s Passover table left a bad taste in my mouth. By the time I was a teenager, I knew I didn’t want it, the jarred gelatinous fish lumps, the giant crackers or any other part of Judaism in my life anymore. Insert decade of drinking and drugs here. I searched, I […]
I have been known to go to the gym for literally 6 minutes at a time. And those are my good days. I spend most of my life on the couch. (Like right now – I’m on the couch. Why do you think I made an entire YouTube show about a woman sitting on a […]
Though in some ways it feels like we’ve been together forever, it’s still new enough that I measure my marriage in days: fourteen. That’s seven loads of laundry, six chicken dinners, five times that we’ve gone into work, four bookcases built, three socks missing their partners, two pots horribly burnt and one Shabbat meal we […]
Dear Jew in the City- What’s the history of Selichos? Why did it come about? Best, Mark Dear Mark- Thanks for your question. As far as the liturgy goes, Selichos are fairly contemporary. By that I mean that they are measured in mere centuries, rather than millennia. Some of the prayers we recite, like Shema, […]
