Building a Jewish Life

As you may have guessed from my long absences, things are quite busy with me. My job hunting has finally stopped, as I now plan to attend seminary for a year, starting this fall. Another thing keeping me busy is helping Holocaust Survivors! I have been working with an organization called iVolunteer NY, and I […]

This is an honest question. Can the “fear/awe of heaven” make you act in a neurotic way? My gut says yes, when we internalize certain mitzvot in a OCD fashion.  Not sure what this question even means? Let me give you an example from my own life. I’ve realized that I don’t use hot water […]

If you don’t already know about the Women of the Wall, you’ll eventually come across it. If you’re lucky, you’ll run across it in a news article. If you’re not lucky, you’ll run into it during an angry rant at a Shabbos table. Yesterday, the Women of the Wall held a special Rosh Chodesh service […]

But don’t fret!  Pesach does not have to be as scary as everyone makes it sound. Really, truly… preparing for Pesach is not that hard. If you don’t have children and regularly sorta-clean your house, you should be able to clean for it in an hour or two. (Kashering the kitchen may or may not take significantly […]

Everyone agrees that living an orthodox life is expensive. However, it’s more expensive than you imagine it will be. (Keep in mind this post does not take into account conversion costs.) You know the regular expenses: Keeping kosher is expensive Start-up costs to turn your kitchen kosher by nearly tripling your kitchen supplies Kosher meat Kosher […]

Being unemployed, my life often feels like Groundhog Day. I don’t always keep up with the date, and I count myself lucky if I know the day of the week. (And that’s probably only because of Shabbat.) Because of this, I almost missed the significance of Sunday, March 3. Two years ago, this day changed […]

Yesterday morning, the blog hit a milestone I never thought I’d see: half a million views (not including feed views). Half a million. Do you guys have nothing better to do with your time than read my rantings and ravings and speculation? Guess not. I hope you’ve found something that helped you, since I started […]

In a small community, the etiquette of saying “Gut Shabbos” or “Shabbat Shalom” is so obvious: you say it to any Jew you meet on the street. In New York…this is not so clear cut.  Based on rants to various people and their responses, everyone seems to agree that, in principle, it is still good […]

It’s back. The terrible quinoa debate from last year (and maybe years before that, I don’t know). I wasn’t following the debate last year until during Pesach, when Jewish housewives everywhere lamented the horribleness of the quinoa insanity at every Pesach meal I attended: Is quinoa “allowed” on Pesach? Is it kitniyot? Is it covered […]

It seems like every single (as in “not in a relationship”) conversion candidate finally has the day when “it” hits: the overwhelming desire to create a profile on a Jewish dating website. You may not even plan to “use” it, but you need to make one in order to look through the profiles of others. […]