Too many people never saw Torah’s beauty. Allison Josephs helps them discover it

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Allison Josephs launched Jew in the City and its initiative, Project Makom, an outreach organization that works to reverse negative associations of frum Jews.

More than gefilte fish

I was raised as a proud secular Jew. I didn’t know any frum Jews personally; all I knew about them were the rumors that swirled around society and what I saw in the headlines or on TV. I thought frum Jews were backward — misogynistic, fanatic, stuck in the past. I was proud to be part of Klal Yisrael but thought that observant Jews took it too far.

When I was eight, there was a kid in my school who was murdered by her father — the man went crazy and killed himself and his two children. My parents had raised my two sisters and me in a very happy home with lots of privileges. But when this triple murder occurred, I realized that nothing I’m doing matters, everything will be gone one day. What was the point of it all?

So there I was, eight years old, launched into an existential crisis. I had no idea there was any wisdom in my heritage — all I knew about was Jewish humor and gefilte fish. I knew there had to be some purpose in life, but had no idea what it was.

My parent told us that if we dated a non-Jew they’d sit shivah, but we’d eat bacon cheeseburgers. We had to marry a Jew because of the Holocaust, the pogroms… and if my mother got on a roll, she’d mention the Inquisition too. We knew the Jewish people had to go on. But we didn’t know why.

When my parents sent me to Hebrew high school, I was expecting my Orthodox teacher to be backward. But instead he was normal and relatable. He had access to a Judaism that made life rich and meaningful. I was the one missing something. I slowly started becoming religious. Everyone who saw me worried I was getting sucked into a cult. My mother, who had a frum bubbe and zeide, had some positive associations, but my father was trying to stop me. I started keeping Shabbos, I would tape the fridge light, he would untape it — this is my fridge.

I challenged my father to study Torah so he could learn enough to persuade me to drop it; he was close to 50! After about a year he came to me and said, “You were right, I was wrong.” Then he, my mother, and sisters all became observant.

Orthodoxy’s PR problem

After I got married, I started working in kiruv full time. A kiruv rabbi saw a posting on Craigslist: a Spanish journalist was seeking Orthodox women to interview. He told me to reach out. She came over the next day.

Everything she’d assumed an Orthodox Jew would be, I was the opposite: She was expecting dirty, frumpy, and outdated. I told my husband, “This is the missing link in the kiruv world. People have such wrong ideas about Orthodoxy.”