How a Bethlehem native who grew up Catholic became a Philly expert in Judaica

Meet Kristen Kreider, the former owner of American Pie on South Street who now oversees the store at the Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History.

• On converting to Judaism: “I didn’t do it for marriage and I didn’t want to force it on my kids when I was raising them, because I felt like my religion was forced on me.”

• Touching moments: “I love the people who come into the store after touring the museum and they’re literally teary-eyed, they were so moved. You never get tired of seeing someone so proud of Judaism and so proud of their people.”

Kristen Kreider was about a minute into her meeting with Gwen Goodman, the former executive director of Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History, when she realized it was a job interview.

As the onetime owner of American Pie, a longtime store on South Street that carried Jewish crafts, Kreider had a discerning eye for Judaica. She thought Goodman wanted her help consulting when they met in 2010, but when Kreider realized she was being interviewed to run the museum’s store, she had to make a confession.

“I said ‘One thing you need to know off the bat is I’m not Jewish,’ ” Kreider recalled. “And she said ‘That’s OK.’ ”

Even though she was named after Christ and grew up in Bethlehem in a Catholic family of seven kids, Kreider always felt a deep connection to Judaism. It began around the time she started babysitting for a Jewish family who ran a contemporary furniture store.

“I thought they were the hippest people yet they kept kosher and were conservative Jews,” she said. “I thought it was a fascinating juxtaposition.”

She didn’t know why she was moved whenever she saw dreidels and Hebrew text, or when TV stations aired Hanukkah promos, but she was.

“I got this warm feeling I couldn’t explain,” Kreider said. “I just kind of always recognized and identified with it.”

Kreider once asked her mom if they could convert to Judaism, but it would take decades — and a career in which she unexpectedly became an expert in Judaica — before she converted in 2012.

Kreider opened American Pie in 1988, after working as a wholesale buyer and sales rep for product lines and craftspeople.

“We were successful the minute we opened the door,” she said.

In 1992, Kreider decided to do a Hanukkah display in her store’s front window. She drove to synagogues across the area, searching in their small stores for a menorah, until she found one she liked.

“I put it in the window, did a Hanukkah scene, and lo and behold there was a steady string of customers trying to buy the menorah out of the window,” she said.

That inspired Kreider to ask craftspeople she knew if they could make menorahs. Within two years, she had a gallery of 200 and began stocking other Jewish crafts, too.

“The timing was just right where it was becoming more of a work of art to display in your home and not just to keep in the cabinet,” she said.

In 2007, with a recession looming and her marriage ending, Kreider closed the store.

By then a mother of four (she and her ex have two kids and she remains close with her two stepchildren), Kreider got back into wholesale before an acquaintance recommended her to the museum. In 2010, she began as director of retail and this year became the managing director of business operations, overseeing the museum store and working to develop other revenue streams.

Two years into her tenure, Kreider converted to Judaism. She’d always believed in God but also had questions, which she found were welcomed in the faith.

“I wanted to believe the Red Sea parted but I didn’t. What I learned early in Judaism is it’s OK to question those things, it’s even encouraged,” she said.

When she converted, Kreider had to renounce Jesus Christ as her savior, but as an animal lover, she asked the panel of rabbis she sat before if she could still pray to St. Francis, the patron saint of animals.

“They looked at each other and one said ‘You know, having gone to veterinary school, I have to agree with that,’ ” she recalled. “Somehow, I got St. Francis grandfathered in.”

At the museum store, Kreider has curated a unique collection of items, from the ceremonial to the silly.

She’s particularly proud of the store’s Polish bronze mezuzah cases (used to protect prayer scrolls affixed on doorways). They’re cast from impressions left on homes in Poland where mezuzahs once hung before they were torn down by Nazis. Each lists the address of where it was found. Once, Kreider said, a customer picked one up and discovered it was cast from his grandparents’ house.

“I love sharing the story, and if people buy it, that’s just a bonus,” she said.

More nontraditional items at the store include a Magic Dreidel Ball; a two-foot blue moose menorah (“It’s not for everybody but you’d think it was the way we are selling them”); and a Volodymyr Zelensky bobblehead.

Paying close attention to current events has paid off for Kreider and the museum, which now does 50% of its sales online. When President Trump mispronounced Yosemite in 2020, the online sales of the store’s “Yo Semite” shirts soared.

“It developed a whole new mailing list of people with that kind of persuasion and sense of humor,” Kreider said.

The store next saw success with Bernie Sanders-wearing-mittens products, Ruth Bader Ginsburg items, and Secret Jewish Space Laser Corps pins (a reference to a conspiracy-laden social media post by Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene).

“I’m constantly on high alert: What’s going to be the next phenomenon and what is appropriate and what is inappropriate?” Kreider said.

She still frets about the time she unintentionally embarrassed Barbra Streisand, who once came to the store for a private shopping trip with her husband and assistant.

Streisand collects yads, which are pointer sticks used when reading the Torah. Her assistant asked what they were for and (Kreider said) Streisand demonstrated by using the one in her hand to underline invisible text from left to right. Kreider, who also had one in her hand, corrected Streisand by moving hers from right to left, as the Torah is read.

“Barbra turned bright red, and then I turned bright red because I was so embarrassed I embarrassed Barbra Streisand,” Kreider said. “But she recovered nicely and so did I.”

• How superfan Monty G became “Philly’s #1 hype fan.”

• Oliver St. Clair Franklin is Philly’s chief British delegate and a Lincoln University grad.

• Check out more We the People here.