Allison Josephs

New York

Founder and Director at Jew in the City

Changing negative perceptions about religious Jews and making engaging and meaningful Orthodox Judaism known and accessible. Founded JITC Hollywood Bureau

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Articles

We Married Off Our Oldest In Jerusalem Last Week

3 weeks ago | jewinthecity.com | Allison Josephs

Last week we married off our daughter, our eldest, to a wonderful young man, in the hills of Jerusalem. The groom, like our daughter, chose to leave the place he was born and return to our ancestral homeland. He chose to bravely serve his land. Even though it is only days after the wedding, he continues to do so as I type these words.
We Needed To Find A Jew In A Remote Forest In Croatia. Against All Odds We Did.

2 months ago | jewinthecity.com | Allison Josephs

My mother was diagnosed with cancer 20 years ago. The disease was asymptomatic for years, but once it went into high gear, she had to begin treatment which tied her down to the hospital. When she made progress in fighting the cancer (she appears to be in remission, thank God!) and her new treatment protocol allowed her to travel, my parents decided that every Pesach would become a special family time to make happy memories around the world.
The Bibas Family Was Murdered And The People Of Israel Were Saved From Bus Bombings

Feb 25, 2025 | jewinthecity.com | Allison Josephs

My neighborhood has been covered in orange balloons since news broke last week that the orange-haired Bibas brothers, Ariel and Kfir, were brutally murdered by Hamas. Israeli forensic teams discovered that a month after the 9 month old and four year old were taken hostage (on October 7) the boys were strangled to death, their bodies desecrated with rocks postmortem, to make it look like they had been killed in an Israeli airstrike.
Every Jew Is Intertwined With One Another: The Pain of Awaiting Our Hostages

Feb 11, 2025 | jewinthecity.com | Allison Josephs

I was thinking of a common phrase the Talmud uses to describe the Jewish people and our relationship to one another. “Kol Yisrael Areivim ze bah ze.” “All Jews are responsible for one another,” we are told. It is a sentiment that many Jews feel in quiet times, but it hits so much harder when our brethren are suffering in unimaginable ways, and we feel a deep duty to help. Because Hebrew is lashon Hakodesh, “the holy tongue,” when we dig into the root of a word, we often find a deeper truth to it.
From Jerusalem with Joy: Our First Child's Engagement and the Fulfillment of Prophecy

Jan 15, 2025 | jewinthecity.com | Allison Josephs

Today our daughter, our oldest child, got engaged in Jerusalem, the city where she was born 21 years ago to a wonderful young man who also chose to make the holy land his home. The wedding will be here too, be’H, *perhaps the first time anyone in our family has been married in Israel in 2000 years.*This has been a rough year (more) for the Jewish people. Our position in the world is increasingly precarious.
Wicked Could Not Have Come At A Worse Time For America

Dec 10, 2024 | jewinthecity.com | Allison Josephs

When Wicked first debuted on Broadway back in 2003, the musical was a stirring, thoroughly inventive tale of an unlikely friendship and society’s cruel rejection of its misfits. Today, though, against the backdrop of campus unrest and a disturbing spike in antisemitism—both all too conveniently ascribed to Israel—the message of the just-released, box office record-breaking film version is much darker.
My Opening Remarks At 2nd Jewish Media Awards

Nov 13, 2024 | jewinthecity.com | Allison Josephs

Good evening and welcome to JITC’s 2nd Jewish Media Awards: The Greatest Night in Jewish Representation. Welcome esteemed honorees, presenters, and studio executives joining us here tonight from Disney, Paramount, Amazon, Sony, and Netflix. The last time we gathered in this prestigious hall for a night of immense Jewish pride was in December 2019. None of us had any idea that, in just a few short months, the world would be coming to an end with COVID.
10/7 - The Shofar Blasts Came Early This Year

Oct 7, 2024 | jewinthecity.com | Allison Josephs

By October 7, 2024 In Anti-semitism, Wisdom During the Days of Awe, the blasts of the shofar are meant to awaken our slumbering soul. As Maimonides writes:On that day a great shofar will be sounded, and those who are lost in the land of Assyria and those who are cast away in the land of Egypt shall come and bow down to God on the holy mountain in Jerusalem.
Nobody Wants This: Positive Jewish Male Representation, Much Else Falls Short

Sep 30, 2024 | jewinthecity.com | Allison Josephs

In early 2023, JITC Hollywood Bureau heard that podcaster Erin Foster was creating a series loosely based on her life. How she, a non-Jewish woman, fell in love with, converted for, and married a Jewish guy. To make the plot salacious enough for a streamer, the Jewish guy became a rabbi. According to the 2021 Pew Study, 72% of non-Orthodox Jews married since 2010 married a non-Jew. Apparently the showrunners believed they needed a more unusual angle than what most of American Jewry is up to.
Hersh Polin-Goldberg: Holding Hope With Pain

Sep 2, 2024 | jewinthecity.com | Allison Josephs

Late Saturday night, the world received dreaded news – six Jewish hostages taken by Hamas on October 7 had been executed by the terror organization shortly before the IDF reached them. Among the slain was American citizen, Hersh Polin-Goldberg, whose parents have become symbols of an indefatigable fight to rescue their beloved son held in terror tunnels under Gaza. So many of us hoped and prayed for a miracle – that these precious souls would eventually come home. The tragic news ended that hope.