OCJAC holds a monthly First Friday “Shabbos Gallery”, featuring new artists each month, with as many as 1,000 visitors coming through the gallery at every event. Many stay for a late-evening Shabbos dinner, led by a Rabbi, who offers a Dvar Torah and intersperses explanations about the Shabbat experience and about Judaism in general. This encourages discussion about mutual understanding and creates a platform for promoting Jewish affinity and appreciation of Jewish culture.
This gallery creates some very unusual opportunities for people who aren’t Jewish to understand Judaism, and it creates opportunities for people who are Jewish. You have your pierced, tattooed art students, you have your Main Line art enthusiasts, tourists – all kinds of different people. It’s a lot of fun.”
Those that work in the gallery are incredibly warm, and the gallery itself is incredibly generous to its visitors. It welcomes guests with open arms, sharing Jewish tradition with all who enter through its doors. …A visit to the Old City Jewish Art Center on First Friday isn’t really just a visit; it is an experience in every sense of the world. Jewish tradition is infused throughout the gallery, in an electric and inviting way —it is impossible to feel unwelcome!”