Freidom Favorites

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...

Sample from chapter #1: Sex in Judaism is a beautiful thing. It’s also terrible. When you do it at the right time, it’s amazing. God himself sits there watching you and jerks off while you’re going at it. When you climax, he does too. Did you know? The relationship between God...

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...

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 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,...

“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...

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...

“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...