Jew in the City’s Allison Josephs Talks About Jewish Outreach & Celebrity

Like many girls her age in the sleepy New Jersey neighborhood where she grew up, little Allison Josephs sometimes dreamt of becoming a movie star.

But after an amazing series of circumstances led her to leave the path of her loving and proudly Conservative Jewish family and become a Ba’alas Teshuva at a very young age, those ideas were forgotten. Instead she channeled her charisma and talent for connecting with people into kiruv, recruiting unaffiliated Jews to join Partners in Torah and Sinai Retreats.

She never imagined that, years later, her new path would lead her full circle back to the original dream. And yet, to date, her acclaimed Jew in the City videos, which humorously debunk negative stereotypes about Orthodox Jews, have been viewed close to 250,000 times.

A Dirty Word

When you hear Allison tell her story, it all makes perfect sense in hindsight:

“In my home growing up, Orthodox Judaism was like a dirty word,” says Allison, now a mother of four. “My father was a doctor and he would come home with stories of Orthodox Jews he encountered who were so wierd. When we visited New York City, I would see religious Jews and I thought that they were like aliens from another planet.”

finally, another video! I thought you had disappeared! I always adore your videos because they’re so informative and have cleared up so many misconceptions for me about orthodoxy to the point of where I’m considering on identifying with that movement when I get older and have a better knowledge of my faith. (Comment on YouTube)

But from the tender age of eight, Allison was already finding herself seriously troubled by spiritual questions. What was life really for? Why bother if we are all destined to die? Why didn’t anyone have any answers? And most importantly, why was no one else losing sleep over this except for her?

She searched long and hard, but never considered turning to the Torah for her answers. But when as a teen she went to a Hebrew school with some inspiring Orthodox teachers things began to change. There were some major turning points in those confusing years, such as the awe-inspiring beauty of a forest on a family trip to Hawaii and then an uplifting shalosh seudos at an NCSY weekend at aged 17.

“I fell in love with God,” she says of those inspiring epiphanies, her sincere spirituality combined with exceptional warmth and poise come through as we talk, just as they do in her videos. “I wanted to be close to Him. I saw that these people were God-lovers and I wanted to be with them. This is where I belong.”

Kicking and Screaming

She describes the long and painful process of shifting her identity to this new world. In Allison’s words, she “was dragged into Orthodoxy kicking and screaming.” She just couldn’t get over her negative perceptions of Orthodox Jews.

“I remember the first time I spoke to a man in a black hat. I was so scared. I thought he must be crazy. And the first time I was in a room with a man in a streimel… I got a big shock when I realized that there was a normal person under that hat.”

Allison struggled intensely with the process but eventually emerged triumphant, even schlepping the rest of her self-proclaimed “strictly treif” family into the camp of Torah Judaism.

I am one of those non-Jews, an African American male as a matter of fact, who just discovered JITC and will be posting this one on my Facebook page today. I personally have found the 8 episodes that I have viewed so far to be both “enlightening” as well as “entertaining!” “Smooth Judaism’ (101) for me!

Being involved in Jewish outreach helped her to find her place. But the more she got involved in kiruv, the more she encountered questions and statements that brought on déjà vu.

“Why do Orthodox Jews dress so strange?”
“Why do all the women have to shave their heads?”
“Everyone knows that Orthodox Judaism oppresses women.”
“They have too many kids because they don’t believe in birth control.”
“Orthodox Jews are backwards and don’t live in the modern world.”

Allison had struggled with all these stereotypes herself in her teen years, so she felt well equipped to respond. Often after listening to her, people would say: “Wow! I never knew Orthodox Jews were normal people until I talked to you.”

“I thought to myself: we are doing the worst job at PR,” says Allison. “People don’t like us. All they know about Orthodox Jews is from the negative headlines and the over-the-top characters in books.”

Debunking Myths

When she discovered the emerging technologies for video production and sharing, an idea was born in Allison’s head: instead of de-bunking these myths one-by-one, person-by-person, she could take her message to the masses using YouTube.

“I decided that I wanted to introduce the world to an Orthodox character they could relate to, someone funny and real. I decided to use the new, democratic technology to get this out to the world,” she recalls.

And so first Jew in the City episode was conceived 4 years ago, debunking myths about head-shaving, hair-coverings and wigs for Jewish women. The video was a big hit and was shared all over the web and has gotten over 60,000 views to date. This is the video that started it all:

Nine more episodes have followed tackling misguided perceptions of kashrus, Shabbos, large families, niddah, sexism, and the afterlife, and all are Laugh-out-Loud hilarious.

You are seriously the funniest Orthodox Jew I have ever met! You’re so chill .. ( This is coming from a 13 year old, Canadian, Jewish girl’s perspective haha )
I wish my mom was like you, you seem really cool
I may not be Orthodox or religious in anyway but watching your video’s, I may consider it later in life.
Oh, aren’t you ever urged by the temptation to eat something non-kosher?

One of the things that you notice immediately about Jew in the City, is that it the production is remarkably professional, especially the recent episodes. The lighting, the sound, the crystal clear picture quality all stand out among other YouTube home-made videos. How does a one-woman show pull this off?

The truth is that while it looks like a one-woman, it takes a team of people to create each episode. Allison has hired the services of a professional film-maker Eliot Gabor, to produce the videos, and his team of production assistants are what give it that A-grade look.

Wow! That sounds… expensive, I say.
“Yes it is.”
Dare I ask how she pays for it?

Allison and her husband have funded the production of the videos themselves, with some help from Allison’s parents.

“Not only that,” says Allison. “Three years ago I had a part-time job earning a good salary, but I had to give that up because I work on Jew in the City every day, more than 30 hours a week. I’m answering emails, speaking on the phone with people who make appointments with me via the website, answering Facebook and YouTube comments, updating the blog, writing the screenplays, doing marketing, etc. I recently ran a fund-raising event for Jew in the City and that was a huge job. It’s all a big financial drain.”

“People are always discussing: What’s your job? How much do you earn? Don’t ask me that question. I just have this message to get out. That’s my focus.”

When not running her unique kiruv enterprise almost single-handedly, Allison is caring for her four children, age 7 months to 8 years. She was actually making them French Toast while calmly giving me this interview.

The Power of Celebrity

Meanwhile, she is planning future episodes that explode myths such as: “Torah and Science are at war” And “All Orthodox Jews look, think and act the same.”

With all these demands on her, what keeps Allison inspired about Jew in the City?

It’s the feedback she gets from people – such as the viewer comments that I have copied and pasted into this article.

There were also comments from viewers who are obviously Orthodox.

“At first I thought that these videos were only for non-religious Jews but I’ve realized that their appeal is wider than that,” says Allison. “Religious Jews tell me that they help them learn how to explain themselves to their non-religious friends and acquaintances. New Ba’alei Teshuva show them to their relatives to help them understand that they haven’t gone crazy. Frum Jews who have doubts say that they felt that this was the first time their own questions were ever answered in a way they related to.”

In fact, one woman who grew up in a Chassidic family and felt so stiffled by the way Judaism had been presented to her that she appeared on an Orthodox Jewish reality televsion show to talk about her feelings, later wrote to Allison saying:

I tend to have a hard time hearing ‘the laws’ and the ‘shoulds’ and the ‘musts’..but I have to say, your wit and humor in getting these messages across got me listening..I watched every video on Youtube and immensely enjoyed each one. Looking forward to more of your stuff..thanks for doing the ‘Work’ you are doing; you… are definitely on to something BIG.

I have to say that I was inspired when watching the latest episode of Jew in the City, which focused on Shabbos:

“The videos seem to resonate with some people in a way that other things never have,” says Allison.

With all the Torah that is available online these days, why is that? I wonder.

Allison thinks that one of the reasons is simply that nowadays most people are used to looking up to someone beaming at them from a TV screen, especially when the production is professional. It seems that her poise, sense of style and perfect make-up, her warm smile, one-liners and the cool camera affects, are what give her message credibility in the eyes of thousands of viewers. They can hear messages from her that they wouldn’t be willing to open their ears long enough to hear from anyone else.

Similarly, the support and participation of TV personality Mayim Bialik, who is Allison’s chavrusa through Partners in Torah, have given a boost to Jew in the City’s celebrity status.

“Celebrity is the haskama in the secular world. People think that I must be someone special because they saw me in these videos. When I write to someone who contacts me through the site, they sometimes reply: ‘I can’t believe that you emailed me back.’ I think, ‘Hey, I’m just a normal person answering an email.’ But because I’m on the screen they think I’m important and my message is important.”

Which brings us back full circle to the little girl from New Jersey who dreamed of being a star… and who’s childhood perfectly prepared her to be the one she became.

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