Jeff Seidel
Jeffrey “Jeff” Seidel (born 1957) is an Orthodox Jewish outreach worker in Jerusalem. Since 1982, he has helped thousands of Jewish college students experience Shabbat in Israel and has run free tours and classes through his Jewish Student Information Centers in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Beersheba, and Herzliya. He also created The Jewish Traveler’s Resource Guide, which lists Shabbat programs around the world.
Seidel was born in Chicago and finished school at Ida Crown Jewish Academy in 1975. He left a psychology doctorate program to move to Israel in 1981. During the 1970s, a small number of Orthodox outreach workers began inviting English-speaking students and travelers to Shabbat meals at the Western Wall. Jeff Seidel joined this effort in 1982.
He initially arranged Shabbat meals for about 15 young people each week. As more local families offered to host guests, the numbers grew to about 150 per week in the early 2000s and have since averaged around 100 per week. He also led walking tours of the Old City’s Jewish Quarter and helped visiting yeshiva students see traditional Jewish study.
In 1986, Seidel founded the Jewish Student Information Center in Jerusalem’s Old City, offering free walking tours, archaeological tours, and religious and holiday classes. The center published The Jewish Traveler’s Resource Guide, which became a key tool for finding Shabbat programs worldwide.
A second center opened near the Hebrew University in 1992, providing Shabbat meals, laundry help, lectures, and more. Centers were later opened near Tel Aviv University in 1994, Beersheba, and the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya. The centers also offer support for Birthright and Hillel alumni who want to study in Israel, including a $400 airfare scholarship.
Seidel runs the Worldwide Passover Hospitality project, pairing students and travelers with host families for the Passover Seder, and coordinates meals for 200–300 travelers in Israel and around the world between Rosh Hashanah and Sukkot.
Since 2017, he has written a weekly op-ed for The Times of Israel on topics such as Jewish continuity, outreach, current events, and on-campus anti-Semitism.
Seidel is married to Penina Greene, the daughter of Velvl Greene, a scientist and Chabad baal teshuva. She is an oncology nurse at Hadassah Medical Center on Mount Scopus. The couple lives in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City.
In December 2014, Seidel’s car was attacked by more than a dozen Arab youths while he was driving two friends to the Mount of Olives cemetery. The car sustained substantial damage, but Seidel and the passengers were unharmed; one passenger received a scratched cornea from shattered glass.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 05:32 (CET).