Satire
Shit People Teach in the Name of Religion
I recently crowdsourced a list of things people had been told or taught during their...
Earning Heaven
“Judaism is about relationships,” sayeth the narrative. “It’s about aligning yourself with truth. It’s about...
Perpetuating Trauma
I was 11 or 12 years old when my school took us to the neighborhood...
Are you happy now?
On Purim, they almost killed us, but in the end they didn’t, we killed 75,000...
Pushka
Velvel couldn’t stop dreaming about Magda Pritzovsky.
Every Sunday, he’d see her headed to the Greek...
Having a Large Family is The Opposite of Valuing Life
We're currently in family therapy, all nine of us and two parents. Even with sessions...
Book Covers
Shloime the Website Builder of Chelm presents...
Having grown up deeply ingrained in the Orthodox Jewish world view, it’s a constant process for me to re-examine what I was taught. Some things obviously rubbed me the wrong way, and I questioned them as part of my journey.
Other things were less aggravating, so I simply accepted them...
The book cover that started it all. Looking back almost three years to the original comment, I see that I actually independently came up with many of these original ideas.
Other titles I can currently come up with include:
"Why? answers to life's biggest questions (that just create new questions instead)""The...
Biography
Philosphy
Deconstructing Nationalism vs. Religion
At this point, I have left both the religion and the nationalist views I was raised with....
The Atheist & The Foxhole
“There are no atheists in a foxhole,” Noah Weinberg used to love to say, swiftly eradicating...
The Trouble With Judaism
My very first essay against Judaism, sparked by the story of Rabbi Meir Pogro's various follies....
Fiction
Lifetime Guarantee
Avrumi Zeivald was prepared to meet his maker. Or at least a maker. Someone’s, even if not his.
The Torah, the Rabbis had assured him,...
Kiruv
I was back in Aish Hatorah.
I guess like positivity childhood memories that resurfaced after I'd dealt with parental trauma, my subconscious felt I was ready to find some good beneath the wreckage.
The building was even bigger and more magnificent - and more rambly. I wandered through towering mazes of limestone and glass. This was the Old City, we...
It took me a long time to realize this, but the kiruv system pulls some really sophisticated mindfucks while trying to convince people about the “truth” of religion.
They will basically play both sides of an idea – contradicting themselves but making some convincing arguments in the process. Until you realize that they just got done using the exact opposite...