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The ‘Real Housewife’ of Passover

Reality TV fixture Jill Zarin now shilling for Streit’s Matzo

by
Stephanie Butnick
November 13, 2014
Former 'Real Housewives of New York City' Cast Member Jill Zarin on April 24, 2010. (Amy Sussman/Getty Images for JCPenney)
Former 'Real Housewives of New York City' Cast Member Jill Zarin on April 24, 2010. (Amy Sussman/Getty Images for JCPenney)

Passover is heading uptown this year. Much-maligned former Real Housewives of New York star Jill Zarin, wife of Lower East Side fabric czar Bobby Zarin, is the new (first?) face of Streit’s Matzo, another iconic Lower East Side Jewish institution. Page Six reports Zarin has a whopping seven-figure deal with the company. Because nothing says Exodus like a former reality TV star.

This isn’t Zarin’s first foray into the business of Jewishness. She took a break from feuding with co-star Bethenny Frankel to write a book called Secrets of a Jewish Mother: Real Advice, Real Family, Real Love with her sister and mother in 2011. “The Jewish Mother knows what she wants,” the book explains, “and what you should want too.”

Now pass the matzoh.

Stephanie Butnick is chief strategy officer of Tablet Magazine, co-founder of Tablet Studios, and a host of the Unorthodox podcast.