What You Don’t See in My Jewish Videos

You probably know me for Jewish content—videos about conversion, holidays, identity, and the tangled beauty of building a Jewish life.

But there’s a lot you don’t see in those clips and captions.

You probably don’t notice the heart monitor I wear on my arm, helping me manage life with Long Covid.

You don’t hear the chaos of homeschooling two neurodivergent kids while juggling pets, pacing points, and exhaustion.

You don’t always catch that I’m a recovering overachiever who now believes in naps, boundaries, and cereal for dinner.

This post isn’t a dramatic reveal or some polished origin story.
It’s just… the rest of me.

The non-aesthetic, deeply real parts that shape how I live—and how I teach, lead, and show up in Jewish spaces.

Because I’m not here to be inspirational.
I’m here to be honest.
And I think that matters.

Transcript below.

Transcript:

You know me for Jewish content, but here’s who I am when I’m not lighting candles or editing YouTube videos.

I’m not here to be inspirational. I’m here to be real. So let’s get real.

 You already know that I’m neurodivergent, autistic and ADHD, and always trying to build systems that don’t rely on willpower.

 Spoiler. I’m really terrible at building systems for myself.

 But I love low energy and high comfort life hacks.

I’m a mom, homeschooling two wonderful and chaotic children.

 Though we might be coming to the end of that chapter. I’m real tired, y’all.

 We live with three cats, a pit bull mix, a turtle, which you might have seen has been escaping this week and a whole ecosystem of guppies and dwarf shrimp.  Um, yeah. It’s kind of funny for a Jew to be raising shrimp, right? They’re teeny tiny.  Well, a year and a half ago I got disabled by long Covid.

It destroyed my autonomic nervous system, the one that controls your automatic things like your heartbeat.

So now I always wear a heart monitor

so I can help pace myself and make sure that I’m getting enough rest and not overdoing it.

 Covid has changed how I do everything,

and I really hate it a lot.

 Something I was working on before the long Covid thing, but the long Covid thing really “helped” along

is that I’m a recovering overachiever and perfectionist

who now believes in naps, boundaries, and cereal for dinner.

My favorite way to rebel: refuse to optimize every second of my life.

 I recharge with books, podcasts, deep research into whatever my latest special interest is,

and pop culture. I am a knowledge dragon. I hoard ideas like dragons hoard gold.

My favorites are Dr. Who and Heartstopper.

Right now I’m watching the Wheel of Time and the Last of Us.

 I love an apocalyptic dystopia. 

And my favorite genre of music is Power Pop.

Which, if you know what that is, you should know that  I am absolutely the stereotype of a millennial girl who was into power pop back as a teenager.

 I was raised in the American Bible Belt, which you might know from my other videos, but now I live outside New York City.  Way more Jews here. It’s very weird to me. Even now, even though I’ve lived here over a decade.

 I’m a licensed lawyer, but I don’t practice law.

I studied political science, languages and linguistics, and also technical theater. You know, like costuming and set design. That’s what I originally thought I was gonna grow up to do, work on TV and movies .

I did do backstage work in the theater for a decade.  I am not an actor, which is why it has been very hard learning how to do these videos and why I don’t feel like my stage presence is going very well generally.

 The thing that’s probably gonna get the most hate comments is that I’m vegan ish. I’ve been vegan ish for about 10 years now. I did it for my health.

I spent years dealing with infertility, both physical infertility and halachic infertility. Like infertile as a matter of Jewish law, which is a topic that we could discuss in itself.  It’s very interesting if you’re not living it.  Basically the way that your body works, you can’t go to the mikvah on time.

So I was successfully able to treat my PCOS infertility through a plant-based diet and strength training.

Also, my favorite food is samosas and they’re really hard to get kosher. So if you have samosa tips, definitely put those in the comments below.  I need a reliable source for samosas.

 My family isn’t Jewish, not a single person in my family is Jewish, and most of my family doesn’t know any Jews but me and my family.

They probably think that I’m weird, but they’re way too kind to say so.

What I hope you take away from this is that there is no one way to be a person,  so there is no one way to be a Jew.  And there is no one way to build a life that matters. You can build the life that matters and is meaningful to you.

 If you’re also a whole, complicated human being: hi. 

Whether you’re navigating faith, disability, neurodivergence, or just plain exhaustion, stick around. I made this space for people like us.