Shabbat dinners were one of the most alien things about orthodoxy to me. Not only was the food weird, there was just SO MUCH OF IT. My family didn’t do multiple courses or even dessert most of the time. Yes, my white trash family just took food from the pans on the stove. Also… it

Women in Beit Shemesh, Israel, won a great victory today for Judaism and human decency. Beit Shemesh has been having some problems between some factions of the chareidi community and the modern orthodox/non-orthodox community in Beit Shemesh. Most of you probably know about the elementary school girls who were spat upon outside their school and

If you know anything personal about me, it’s probably that I LOVE books. I get many review copies from various sources, but not usually on Jewish topics. I’m a voracious reader; a couple hundred books a year. For realz. Not all unemployed people are down at the race track, you know. However, there’s one genre

Books are a staple of Jewish life. Studying Jewish texts can take over your entire table, since you may need at a minimum: the text itself, a Tanach to look up verses cited, a Hebrew dictionary, and an Aramaic/Talmudic dictionary. You can replace or supplement these with your laptop nowadays. But you still need a

Are you a conversion candidate or baal teshuva or potential baal teshuva in the DC area? Or can you get to Kesher Israel in DC one evening a week? Here’s a great class for you! And it’s FREE! I’m afraid I can’t find a link to more information, but this is the announcement I received:

Have a question about something in your kitchen? Did the ever-present chicken soup spill on a dairy plate? Did you accidentally stir it with a pareve spoon? Or perhaps you dropped a piece of cheese in the pot? Sometimes asking the question is harder than realizing there is a question in the first place. You

A bit of a strange post today. I want to improve my writing, and who better to ask than my audience? I know that my writing is sometimes construed as arrogant. Problem is (in my opinion) that I have a very formal/antiquated/convoluted way of speaking and writing. I’m also too “to the point” than some

Kindly curious person or a nosy yenta: “So when did you convert?” Me: “Uhhh…that’s complicated.” I have the feeling I’m not alone here. Do you get confused or defensive or tongue-tied when someone asks when you converted? It sounds like such a simple question, but it’s not. I feel like the date I converted ignores

Generally, no. Not unless you want him to, but perhaps in some Chassidic communities. However, most rabbis I know would probably feel pretty awkward if asked to name another person. After all, the convert has to live with it for forever. That’s a lot of pressure to put on a rabbi. Unless you are in

Tonight is the first night of Chanukah. Fry up your latkes, gather your sufganiot, and spin that dreidel!  My Chanukah is off to an inauspicious start. As I wrote earlier, I had the great zchus (LOLZ) to attend Hackathonukah on Sunday. Keeping with the Hanukkah theme, we had all kinds of fried goodies: latkes, jelly