What do yoga, pasta-making and Shabbat dinner have in common? Admittedly not much — aside from the fact that they have all been centerpiece activities for events organized by Bianca Kisin, creator and founder of Nice Jewish Girls, a New York City-based social group for Jewish women in their 20s and 30s.
Kisin, 23, is a Long Island native and marketing manager at New York University. She graduated from Brandeis University in 2023 and moved back home shortly thereafter. With most of her social circle left behind in the Boston area, her first few months in the city were lonely — there were lots of things to do, but no one to do them with.
But Kisin is not one to sit around and wait for community to find her. “If it’s not there, I’m going to create something myself,” she told the New York Jewish Week.
In August of that year, Kisin established her “entrepreneurial side quest,” as she calls it: She founded a new social club called Nice Jewish Girls. The group’s aim, according to Kisin, is to “build a welcoming community for all Jewish women.”
While there are plenty of Jewish social clubs around the city, such as Jewish Social NYC and Shabbat Club, most are co-ed. Kisin wasn’t a fan of the matchmaking expectation that she felt often came with attending these types of events. She wanted a place where she and other Jewish women around New York City could simply meet for the sake of being friends.
Using an app called Geneva, which is dedicated to bringing together people with common interests to form both online and in-person communities, Kisin planned her first event: a 15-person Shabbat dinner at Anixi, a kosher, vegan Mediterranean restaurant in Chelsea.
The timing turned out to be fortuitous. Soon after, Jewish life around the world was shaken by Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel and the wave of antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment that followed.
“I found that after Oct. 7, many girls who came to my events were so relieved and happy that they could find a space where they could feel comfortable making friends, knowing everyone there would be respectful of their culture and background,” Kisin said.
She was experiencing what Jewish Federations of North America has termed “the Surge,” a groundswell of interest among previously unengaged Jews in connecting with Jewish culture and community in the wake of Oct. 7.
The phenomenon brought Justine Harnett, an event manager for a private club, to Nice Jewish Girls. After Oct. 7, she said, she realized she had no Jewish friends, so when she stumbled onto the Nice Jewish Girls Instagram account, she was intrigued. She attended her first event, at an indoor golf course, in February.
“I walked in knowing absolutely no one, and I walked out feeling like I was part of a family,” she said.
In February, the Nice Jewish Girls met up at Swingers, an indoor “crazy golf” bar in Nomad. (Courtesy of Bianca Kisin)
Since launching, Kisin has hosted more than 40 get-togethers, with adventures ranging from comedy shows to kugel bakes, with some 200 women participating in groups of 20 to 30 at a time. The Instagram account, which went live in January 2024, has more than 1,500 followers today.
Kisin does the majority of event organizing by herself, prioritizing her day job during working hours and planning NJG events at night and on the weekends. Her goal isn’t to turn a profit; Kisin often pays for events out of her own pocket, and she risks personally entering the red if a given event is not well-attended — it’s a gamble, she feels, but a worthy one.
“This is my baby and I’m the proud mama,” she said.
NJG’s events, despite being marketed towards Jewish women, generally lean secular. Activities like movie nights and krav maga workouts allow for the Nice Jewish Girl community to be accessible to all, regardless of one’s Jewish background.
Hosting non-religious events was a deliberate choice for Kisin, who believes that Judaism is a spectrum and that her events should be for “everybody and anybody.” Kisin’s parents and grandparents immigrated from Ukraine and Uzbekistan, making her a first-generation American. Nice Jewish Girls is her effort to practice “tikkun olam,” or repairing the world, she said.
The secular nature of NJG is part of what drew Harnett in, she said. Harnett said she always felt more of a cultural tie to Judaism than a religious one, so attending NJG events like the one Swingers, an indoor “crazy golf” bar in Nomad, and pasta-making gave her “a nice opportunity to build Jewish community” without taking on any religious engagement.
An exception comes on Shabbat, when Nice Jewish Girls has joined the ranks of social clubs in the city offering their own spin on Shabbat dinners. After Stephanie Zauderer, 33, attended her first Nice Jewish Girls event last year, an eight-person Shabbat dinner at the kosher Israeli mini-chain Hummus Kitchen, she was inspired to pitch a home-cooked Shabbat meal to Kisin.
“Cooking is my absolute number one love and passion,” said Zauderer, a former professional chef. “So being able to share my light through food is something really important to me, [as well as] bringing Jewish people together.”
Stephanie Zauderer, a former professional chef, has made multiple homemade Shabbat meals for the Nice Jewish Girls community. (Courtesy of Bianca Kisin)
The duo’s first Shabbat meal in January was a success — 15 people showed up to a NJG member’s Upper West Side apartment. The group spent the evening together bringing in Shabbat with traditional prayers and eating kosher food together, cooked by Zauderer. The evening was such a success that the group decided to make the event a recurring one, scheduling the second for mid-June. Other events — including a happy hour shared with another Jewish social club — are already in the works.
“I just want to continue to make [this] bigger and better and even more fun for my Nice Jewish Girls,” Kisin said.
Nice Jewish Girls is hosting a happy hour July 23 at 6:30 p.m., co-hosted with the Jewish social club Jewish & Fabulous. Check out @nicejewishgirlsny for more information.
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