Freidom Favorites

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...

“There are no atheists in a foxhole,” Noah Weinberg used to love to say, swiftly eradicating all actual atheists who undoubtedly have existed in foxholes. That statement further disregards all the individuals who became atheists in foxholes, like the blaspheming Rabbi in Elie Wiesel’s Night. From the moment I...

From the back cover: Are you worried that someone from the secular world will ask you a question about Judaism that you don’t have an answer for? Are you heading out to a campus to inspire others about Judaism with only a tenuous amount of knowledge of it yourself? Are you concerned...

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 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,...

Interesting anecdote about this book cover. It's a composite of two different Rabbi faces, i.e. it's not any specific Rabbi, so that I wouldn't poke fun unnecessarily at someone. That's how much of a tzadik I am. From the back cover: Rabbi Shlomo Levi Birenshmaltz (ZATZHA"L: of blessed, blessed memory), like...

“The will of God is so,” explains the The Kiruv Rabbi in the most non-condescending voice he can muster. The Pimply Kid before him, plucked from the bottom of the university barrel, nodded stupidly. “And so,” continued the Rabbi, “It figures by default that the Jews are the most important people...

I opened my eyes for the first time, and saw from one end of the universe to the other. It was grossly overrated. For this? For this you dragged me into existence? Freshly born, in that first instant I had an understanding of all things. And I understood it was not worth...

From the back cover: “This generation, like every generation before it, is a confusing time. Like all eras, ours is the worst. More than ever, progress (a very unfortunate thing indeed) has created new situations that we are not accustomed to. What is a Jew to do? How can one can...