In an unexpected turn of events, my life has become consumed with helping broken people heal, since the launching of Makom a few years ago. My original passion of making Jewish observance accessible and meaningful to non-Orthodox Jews expanded to a new area when I discovered a population that had been hurt by a skewed version of […]

Dear JITC, I grew up in a secular Jewish home, and converted to Orthodox Judaism in my twenties (I converted because my mother wasn’t Jewish, only my father). Initially I was so gung-ho and extremely meticulous and passionate about my observance, I was on such a spiritual high and it was amazing. But it was […]

“You’re really hot!” he exclaimed as I walked into his office. I immediately regretted showing up. A colleague of mine is friends with a successful publicist who said he’d meet with me as a favor to him. I was taken aback that this publicist would speak to a woman like this during a professional meeting, […]

“Did you hear that The Oprah Magazine covered Footsteps?” a text message from a friend read. (Um, no. I had no idea Oprah even had a magazine.) I quickly scour Google to find the piece and realize I have seen O on the newsstands but never saw this site before. “Are you going to respond […]

I was raised by the quintessential Jewish mother. In other words, her favorite pastime was (and still is) worrying about her children (and now grandchildren). There are many things that can, God forbid, go wrong to the people you love. And I have inherited both my mother’s unrelenting love for her young and her wildly […]

I didn’t become observant through a kiruv organization. I became observant due to a search for meaning in life during my childhood. Thankfully, as I started to increase my observance at the end of high school, NCSY was there to give me a network of support and friends to help me acclimate into the Orthodox community. I […]