Biography

It all fell apart one day, and I do not get credit for doing so. The initiative came from outside myself. I did not have the inner strength to do the unthinkable, the fortitude to acknowledge failure, the resilience to be anything but what my current shitty life was. So it...

I always transition quickly. Within a week, there was no indication that I was ever religious. I would take tourist friends I met at hostels on tour of Meah She’arim, to try to look at that world through their eyes. Just a fascinating anthropological study, instead of a social institution...

I hated Morah Tova for about 12 years. I was proud of how much I hated her. My mother says she was a frustrated artist. I remember telling her she was not invited to my birthday party. She seemed unfazed. I hated going to kindergarten. I would cry, I am...

I will not go into detail about this chapter of my life, because it involves other people. I will say this: experiencing other people suffer can be more traumatic than suffering yourself. I still feel myself relapsing into PTSD-like experiences of anxiety and stress when people around me experience...

The following is a guest post by Yair Gordon. I found his response articulate, poignant, and personal, stating in different tones a lot of the issues and personal grievances I struggled with myself in Judaism. I relate a lot to the feeling of having given my all, trying to...

I have long had a tenuous relationship with Israel. Israelis as a collective bug the shit out of me. Rude, bureaucratic, with very little sense of tact, sophistication, or anything that I perceived as culture. I never really was Israeli – despite being born there, Hebrew is my second...

I remember trying to take my baby son to Shul so I could pray in a Minyan. Feeling like an idiot by walking around with him in a sling, getting funny looks from everyone else there. Hoping and praying (get it?) that I wouldn’t need to walk out in the...

“I’m poly,” I wrote her. “So it’s complicated.” “How come I’m only finding out now?” She wanted to know. “Most poly people put it in their profile. I am not poly.” “I’m sorry,” I said. “I forgot to add it.” “Well, take care then.” --- We had hit off unusually well. Most of my...

Shame is a bitch. A motherfucking cuntbusting bitch. Of all negative emotions, it’s the one that hits me the hardest, because it challenges my very existence. To stare in the face of your shame is to stare into the gut clenching void that says “you suck too much to be here at...

I used to walk by the cheder at any time of day or night and just hear singing from within. It was magical. At night, the lights would glow from the building. I would tell my mother “Some day I’m going to go there, right?” and she’d say “yes,...