Biography

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...

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...

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...

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...

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 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...

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...

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...

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...