Memoir

When he was something like 10 years old, his school’s idea of an educational experience was bringing in a sheep to be ritually slaughtered and dissected.  Nothing could prepare him for the moment when the sheep went from alive, albeit bound, to an explosion of red blood that burst forward...

I sense a continuous state of judgment and disapproval from you towards me and my siblings, for not "doing what's right", not "thinking critically", and not "using our own judgment". We are "following the masses" and "doing what's easy and convenient". I find this accusation absurd in light of what...

She approaches, the wife of the president. Sherlon, her name is. Sherlon Goldfarbstein. "What a beautiful son you have," she exclaims, gesturing towards my daughter. She gestures enthusiastically towards my other daughter, thinking she’s my partner. “Such a beautiful son you've made.” Upon clarifying the second of her two mistakes, that my partner...

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,...

I was 11 or 12 years old when my school took us to the neighborhood holocaust museum (what, yours doesn’t have one?) The rabbis warned us that the museum curators might not have the same sensibilities that we enlightened religious people did, and therefore we might encounter some pictures of...

My brother joins the Israeli military tomorrow. My main emotion is sadness, which is saying a lot because I don't usually let myself feel much sadness. Yosef is joining a special-forces unit, which means he'll be doing harder, more brutal training, get exposed to more dangerous situations, and do...

One of the most important days to me, far more than my birthday, is the day I left religion. This is the day, to borrow from fundamentalist religion, that I was born again. For many people it's a gradual process, but for me there was a day in mid-august...

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...

https://soundcloud.com/shalom-tzvi-shore/with-alex-shandrovsky Recently, in light of recent events, a friend of mine asked to have a call with me, which was quite awesome, and to record it, which was cool. We ended up discussing a whole bunch of stuff - why I write this stuff on Facebook and what it's been like for...

9th grade came around, which was a whole new level. Yeshiva Ketana is 3 years of “Junior High school”, which meant a different part of the neighborhood, finishing at 9:30 every evening, and studying Gemarah for the first time. If I thought Mishna was difficult, Gemarah was a whole new...