Did I tell you? I have a new show, Raising Manhattan

Did I tell you yet? I have a new show on Awestruck.

A lot of big things have been happening over in the Gruber-Hermon household. Pretty exciting stuff, actually. First, we went from having four kids in our New York City apartment, to having five. No, you didn’t miss a pregnancy, and no, we didn’t adopt. A really beautiful, sweet, and fragile foster child basically appeared at our doorstep around Thanksgiving, and we fought like wolves to keep him in our home. He’s six, obsessed with Captain America, and the newest brother in our band of many. He even showed up with his own Chanukah candles — how’s that for a sign? He’ll be with us for at least the next several months, but maybe longer. One day at a time though.

Raising Manhattan, Season One

Around the very same time, I signed a contract with Awestruck, an exciting new women’s comedy-focused network, to make a first season of a reality show about our lives. It’s called Raising Manhattan, and a super real, honest look into what life with a lot of kids in Midtown Manhattan is really like, and the gist of it is simple: chaos. We like the chaos, though. Like anyone with a big family will tell you, we forgot what calm even feels, sounds, or tastes like.

If you’re wondering why you don’t see our newest addition, our foster child, on camera, it’s because we’re obligated to protect his privacy by New York state law, and happy to honor that.

I think I’m most excited about it because we’re unicorns on a few different levels. First, almost none of my friends in New York have this many kids. It’s a surreal slice of American life, because the normal family here has about two kids, the idea of having more than that in a three bedroom apartment in New York’s wildest neighborhood? Well, it’s mind-boggling for most that we have easier access to drag queens than soccer fields. What’s more exciting to me on a personal level, though, is that people are about to get a uniquely positive slice of a different type of Jewish family.

We aren’t the Greenbergs or Katz family from next door. My husband is a fresh-off-the-boat Israeli with a thick accent, my kids all have sort of intensely Jewish-sounding names, and we’re spicy Sephardim. America, and I dare say even most American Jews, aren’t really familiar with us as a culture. We’re excited to share how much more there is to our vibrant culture in Raising Manhattan than just gefilte and Seinfeld.

Take a look at the first episode below, and I hope you’ll invite your friends to watch too. You can subscribe to Awestruck’s YouTube channel to watch Raising Manhattan from anywhere in the world at any time.