Home - Building a Jewish Life

Dealing with Coping

How do you cope with going back to normal life when you’re not “normal” anymore? I don’t remember who originally asked me that question, but it’s the perfect way to describe things. My answer? Everyone copes, whether they want to or not. Some do it better than others. And some circumstances are more conducive to […]

Convert Questions: Can a Convert Keep His or Her Piercings?

Tattoos are discussed here. Piercings can be an issue for two primary reasons: 1) keeping your body intact and in its natural form and 2) because piercings used to indicate that a person (particularly a male) was a slave. In general today, piercings don’t appear to be an issue for conversion candidates except for social […]

Tomorrow Is Ta’anit Esther

Just in case you don’t already know, tomorrow is a fast day: Ta’anit Esther (The fast of Esther). Because Purim falls on motzei Shabbos (Saturday night) and Sunday this year, the fast is pushed forward to the Thursday before. The fast tomorrow is from sunrise to sunset. Normally, the fast would end after the Megillah […]

Revisiting the Mitzvah of Not Embarrassing People

It’s raining in Northern California, and that means driving in the rain with Californians. This is ugly. And it made me reflect on Monday’s post. I said that I put a lot of emphasis on avoiding embarrassment. However, I realized that I have an area of my life where I actually WANT to embarrass people. […]

Survival Kit: Living Without Kosher Restaurants

I’m a student, and I’m not particularly fond of cooking. (Though I’m a great chef’s assistant!) And the closest kosher restaurant is 2 hours away. How on earth do I survive?? It’s not for the faint of heart. The answer is pretty straightforward. I cook at home, I eat at the homes of others, B”H […]

Discussion: Your Favorite Mitzvah

Since it’s the first day back, I’m throwing a softball. What’s your favorite mitzvah? When all’s said and done, I would say avoiding embarrassing other people. I try to put a lot of effort into that. What do I look forward to improving? Kashrut. Only because I want to be an awesome host one day. […]

News: Massacre in Israel

Since there is so much going on in Japan and Libya, it appears that a crime against humanity has flown under the news radar. My dad is a total news junkie, and if I know news he doesn’t, there is a problem. (My news sources are Facebook and Twitter. No TV for this girl for […]

Management Update: What Is this Blog, Anyway?

I thank all you regular readers for your patience with my sporadic writing this week. I hope to have the blog back to “normal” starting Monday morning at 7am Pacific. Now, for you new folk. There’s a lot of you. Like a lot a lot. On Tuesday, March 1st, I hit 20k pageviews after writing […]

Lessons from the Gentle Giant

Ilan passed a week ago tonight, and this has been the hardest week of my life. In addition to the obvious, there have been other serious issues in my life this week, all conspiring to give me panic attacks. Thankfully, and much to my surprise, I have handled the anxiety, anger, hurt, frustration, pain, etc, in […]

Things That Make Me Happy: The Maccabeats

Believe me, I have plenty to say rattling around in my head. It’ll come soon. After all, I have tax law classes for the next three days… But in the meantime, I wanted to share something that makes me happy: the new Maccabeats video is out! I LOVE the throw-back to the Candlelight video! Ilan […]