Memoir

As all this darkness and such was unfolding I found myself in a top rabbinical academy, studying to get Smicha and become a Kiruv rabbi myself. I had dreamt of this for years. This was the purpose of it all – to apply all those years of knowledge for the...

Sometime in between acting out suicide bombings with his Playmobile In between sneaking into his grandparent’s house to try to masturbate to a nipple on Fashion TV In between hoping his parents had seminary girls over for Shabbos meals so he could talk and look at girls In between browsing porn 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...

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...

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 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...

12th grade is the first year of Yeshiva gedola. Literally the big leagues, this is the first year of the rest of your life. You enter a study hall that could literally be the place you sit for the next 50 years. My classmates are still there 12 years...

be a famous guru and change the worldbe a renowned therapist in my own cityfind a therapist save the planetsave the datetry to save be a millionairebe debt freepay the credit card minimums build a businessbuild a careertry to keep my job be the world’s best dadtry to be there for the kidstry...

Mitzpeh yericho was my only exposure to the National Religious community in Israel. Being charedi, I half admired half looked down upon them. They were so much more balanced. Their lives were simpler, less burdened, seemingly, by religion. And yet that itself was the problem – they didn’t take religion as...

Psychedelics have played a key part in my growth and healing past traumas. When I have spoken about them in the past, more people have asked me about my experiences, and I finally sat down to complied a rough overview of my own journey. Along the way, I tried...