I hope you have a fun Lag B’Omer! Break out the BBQ, shave, get a haircut, and don’t burn anything down!

You get four invitations to “The Annual Dinner.” In one day. Seven in one week, and I doubt the mail onslaught is over yet. From shuls past and present, Hatzolah, yeshivas, and seminaries. One is for a shul you’ve never even belonged to. In fact, you’ve never even been there. How does that happen??  All […]

I’ve written several times before about the need for every convert and BT to have a mentor. But really, you need at least five mentors because each will expose you to a different part of the community and to different facets of Jewish life. As a bonus, you see how multiple people handle similar situations […]

“I take a shower on Friday morning, and by the time Shabbat is over, I feel disgusting.” This conversation came up recently, and I realized there had to be a post on it ASAP. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m OCD (in the real way), and cleanliness is unusually important to me. It broke my heart […]

Today, I bring a personal question to the blog. Despite over 11 years of being “Jewishly affiliated,” I still feel most connected to the secular calendar. Only in the last few years have I made more of an effort to interact with the Hebrew calendar.  This has created a strange problem, I’m not sure how […]

Shavuot will be here soon, and we all know the deep connections most converts feel for the book of Ruth. (Or Rut, as I like to call her.) There’s a new book out that’ll put a whole new spin on how you read it!  I was given a PDF of the book in the hopes […]

If you’re near NYC or can get here on Sunday, May 17, there’s a three hour panel discussion you don’t want to miss.  Conversion Crisis: Is the System Broken? will host two of the biggest names in conversion, in addition to the President of the Union for Traditional Judaism (UTJ): Rabbi Shlomo Riskin Rabbi Marc […]

It’s that time of year again… Pesach. And that means cleaning. Yay, right?  Preparing for Pesach can feel overwhelming, but thankfully, we’re not reinventing the wheel around here. You too can stand on the shoulders of giants! There are a lot of Pesach guides on the internet, but what they say varies widely. If you’ve […]

Yes! (But in some communities, it may be discouraged or even “not done.”) But doesn’t a name need to be official before you can use it? Nope. That’s true both under the secular law and Jewish law. Well, in the sense that neither prohibits you from calling yourself whatever you want whenever you want. Want […]

Hot water urn. Electric kettle. Hot water pot. Coffee urn. Hot water heater (not to be confused with the one for your sinks and showers). Water boiler. Hot water dispenser. Pump pot. Whatever you call it, it gives you hot water. Before I entered the Jewish community, hot water urns only existed in hotels and […]