Building a Jewish Life

I know, this sounds like a “typical Debbie Downer post from Kochava.” But I don’t think it is, though what I have to say will probably stir a lot of emotions. Some of you may not know (and those of you who do may have kept silent) that psychological testing is a growing trend in […]

Erika, the always insightful and clever blogger at BlackGayJewish, wrote a very interesting post recently about her friend’s decision to consider getting an orthodox Conversion 2.0. The post was very honest and raised good questions for a person considering “upgrading” their conversion (I hate using that word, but it often conveys the feeling the candidate […]

Just a quick thought before Shabbat this week. Reading this week’s parsha, Yitro, I was hit with the desire to read Ruth. The story of Ruth has never struck the same chord in me as it seems to with other converts and conversion candidates, but today something did strike me. Boaz, in his first conversation to […]

As a lawyer, linguist, and all-around nerd, I like words. A lot. I especially like fun words: unusual words for normal concepts, foreign slang, anachronisms, and words that are just fun to say. Mamish, davka, and shtark all fall into both the first and last category above. They are unusual-to-me words for very “normal” concepts, […]

Let’s momentarily get back to the practical, “don’t make a fool of yourself” advice that this blog is known for. In this topic especially, I welcome the comments of others. This post is based solely on what I’ve been able to pick up in approximately 10 years of reading and discussions with others. The problem: […]

Today, we’re going to discuss something heavy, and I’m going to share one of my “conversion woe” stories.  A rabbi once asked me inappropriate questions. Nothing physically inappropriate happened, and he didn’t look like he was relishing every detail of the answers he made me give, but it was inappropriate and exploitative nonetheless. Unfortunately for […]

In a jaw-dropping moment of public relations FAIL, the Israeli political party Shas released an election ad stereotyping and bashing Russian converts (perhaps all Israeli converts?). Here is the video. There are Hebrew subtitles on the video, but if you click the CC button on the bottom so that captions are on, the English translation […]

As promised, the new and improved “conversion test” is posted! I took it down almost a year ago, but before then, the test was the number one search engine path to this blog. Hopefully you newbies will find something on the blog worth staying for after you’ve seen the test! It is very long, and […]

If you haven’t picked up on this yet, I’m a Type A list maker extraordinaire. I love lists and checkboxes and forms. This means that the beginning of both the Jewish and secular years make me re-think my lists and habits. It’s always much worse as the secular year approaches because it seems the entire […]

Quite literally. Yesterday was my first day in a modern Hebrew language class. I had forgotten how much I love learning languages!  I wanted to share a funny story with you from my first day: Moreh (Teacher): “Kochava, tell me a word with the letter reish.”Kochava: “Uhhh…rasha?”Moreh: “LOLZ” The day’s other contenders included, but were not […]