When my father was almost 50 years old, he became an Orthodox Jew. My mother, two years his junior, did too, but she always had a positive association with religious Jews and Judaism. Her “Bubbe” and “Zeide” were frum, spoke only Yiddish, learned Torah, and had long seders. Her love of the alter heim, its food […]
In a world obsessed with devices, it occurred to me that we are living in an age where silence dominates many situations. Silence between couples, silence between families, silence everywhere you turn as people tap, tap, tap on their devices. What an isolating existence. But what if there was an antidote to silence? What if […]
When I was 17 years old, I spent the summer studying in Israel. I knew I wanted to be religious, but at that point, didn’t know in which Orthodox sub-group I belonged. There were so many of them! I spent shabbos with a variety of families, including a charedi Sephardic ba’al teshuva family in Jerusalem. […]
Last Shabbos, we thought we had turned off Alexa (the intelligent personal assistant developed by Amazon), but then, at just past midnight as I told our guest, “I’m an extreme moderate,” she woke up and said, “You want modern music? OK!” She then proceeded to blast black gospel music throughout our kitchen. Which is ridiculous, because […]
On Friday morning, I opened up Facebook and read that Jared and Ivanka Kushner were going to be flying to the Mideast with President Trump that night on the Jewish Sabbath. A spokesperson for the couple said they had gotten approval to do so from a rabbi. As I read through the comments of several […]
A few months ago, I was approached by NRG360, which started out as a division of the Israeli newspaper, Maariv. They were doing profiles on six Jews who lived outside of Israel and asked if they could showcase me and my work. It seemed like a great opportunity to break down stereotypes about Orthodox Jews, […]
