Building a Jewish Life

Whether changing your name for marriage, divorce, or other reasons, American society has seen fit to make each of us reinvent the wheel.  Apology: Sorry, this is very US-centric. Despite the fact that thousands of people change their names each year (the BBC estimates 58,000 in the UK alone in 2011), it is as though name […]

Mazal tov to Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis, who will be the next Chief Rabbi of the British Commonwealth! Current Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks will retire this September. Lord Rabbi Sacks is a tough act to follow, but hopefully the world will give Rabbi Mirvis a fair chance. Commonwealth, you say? I thought he was only the […]

I hope you’re all prepared for the end of the world on Friday! I’m relieved to know that I can skip preparing for Shabbat. Erev Shabbos gets so crazy, it’ll be nice to relax while the world ends. But seriously. I’ve been spending a lot of time updating the pages. The Facebook page has also […]

Chances are that if you became religious later in life (in any movement), you have had times when you were terrified that you were DOIN IT RONG. Whatever “it” was.  Right or wrong, you get worried. Or embarrassed. This usually results in avoiding the issue entirely or avoiding it when other people are around. See, for […]

…Because I’m a sucker for pain, I suppose.  I make no promises about schedules, quality, or political correctness. But if anyone decides to get stalkerish again, you’ll be hearing from the police, my lawyer, and 150lbs of angry dogs. I bet even the three legged cat will get in on that. However, I don’t yet […]

I’ll spoil the end of the review for you: Don’t buy this book. It will do you more harm than good, whether you’re reform or orthodox or whatever else.  Disclaimers. Because I’m Not an Expert. I received this book for free, but not to review it. I received it in a overflow book giveaway arranged […]

And that somebody would be me! I never could have seen this a year ago, when I was still waiting to convert and had been waiting for several years. But I was finally in New York and had a great beit din! And things went smoothly, and I converted in January. I met my chosson […]

The Olympics is supposed to be a time of international unity and brotherhood. Unfortunately, the reality falls very short of this ideal. Here are some of the “fundamental principles” of the Olympics, from their Charter [emphasis mine]: The goal of Olympism is to place sport at the service of the harmonious development of humankind, with […]

I apologize if you received multiple copies of yesterday’s post. Since I’ve been gone, Blogger has completely re-done their site, and I couldn’t make it work right. Sorry 🙁 Shabbat shalom! (And no, I currently have no idea if I’m back regularly. Maybe.)

Quite frankly, I’m tired of people bad mouthing conversion candidates who are married to a Jew or dating a Jew. When I was converting, it would often come up that I was single for most of the years of my conversion process and wasn’t dating once I formally entered the orthodox conversion process. Once the […]