Building a Jewish Life

Over Pesach, I did some light magazine reading, as orthodox people seem to do in huge numbers. (Not normally my thing, but somehow it happened this week.) The Orthodox Union (OU) publishes a couple of free magazines that are sent to member synagogues, and I picked up two of them. I’ll share two of the […]

I don’t know about you, but I frequently confused these words for years (and didn’t even know I was confusing them). They just sounded so similar to my ear! Especially since people can slur these words when speaking quickly with an American accent. Honestly, I don’t know that I’d ever encountered the word “geula,” so […]

When talking about conversion, it’s easy to focus on the bad stuff, the challenging stuff, the frustrating stuff, the embarrassing stuff. I mean, that’s really kind of the point of this blog: helping you through those points to make them less painful. Inspiration and warm fuzzies isn’t my strength. I haven’t been criticized as a […]

Since we were just speaking of Sephardim, you should know about this really cool band! I feel like I should put air quotes around “band” because this doesn’t strike me as your average make-money-sell-merch-get-groupies band stereotype I have in my head. It feels kinda…educational. But in the enjoyable way. The really enjoyable way! No really, […]

Just in case you hadn’t heard about this before, Spain recently passed a law that grants (ok, expedites, it’s not automatic) citizenship to descendants of Sephardi Jews who were expelled from Spain in 1492. How on earth could you do that, you ask? A list of common surnames! I mean, duh, right? Sure. That law […]

It’s Amazon Prime Day! Christmas for modern commercialism! How wonderful, right? Of course it would fall on a Jewish fast day. What two different energies to a day could there be? But that doesn’t mean you can’t take advantage of Prime Day.  There is no problem with buying things on Prime Day when it’s also […]

Things may have seemed quiet here on the blog, but there’s been a lot going on behind the scenes. After some health challenges and the birth of my daughter and adjusting to parenthood (you know, NBD), I’ve been working to move the blog to its own domain full of exciting new, expanded content! The new […]

This video seems quite appropriate for the last few weeks: “light a candle for peace.” Enjoy the delicious 80s-ness of it. I don’t know how I discovered the song Light One Candle by Peter, Paul, and Mary, but I like it. And I listen to it every Chanukah. Maybe you’ll like it too! And since […]

In the Talmud, the rabbis require that a potential convert be asked a pretty specific question: The rabbis taught: When someone nowadays presents himself for conversion, we say to him: “Why do you wish to convert? Are you not aware that nowadays Israelites are careworn, stressed, despised, harassed and persecuted?”If he responds, “I know, and […]

The TL;DR Version Do you have to wear white on Yom Kippur? No. Will you be weird (or the only one) if you don’t wear white to synagogue on Yom Kippur? Nope.  The RTFM Version Wearing white (presumably only to synagogue because what else are you doing while fasting?) on Yom Kippur is a very […]