Jumping into the water

Mentally I am already in Israel when I call up the taxi company to reserve a taxi in advance from the airport to Jerusalem. I dial an Israeli number over WhatsApp and immediately hear people screaming in Hebrew in the background. I know I have reached the right place. I explain what I am looking for in Hebrew and he tells me to wait on the line. I expect nice elevator music, but I'm spoiled. Instead I get to listen to the tumult in the office. Someone asks where her cab is. Someone asks is a driver is free. Someone asks how much that would cost. I am feeling a little scared, but I quickly understand that everything is okay. That was my first impression of Israeli culture since I've been there for a visit with my best friend more than two years ago. Did I miss it? To be honest, yes. It's life. Am Israel Chai!

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Alumni Reflections on Pluralism and Student Life at Pardes during Covid

Hello friends close and far! I wrote the following piece for the Pardes Havruta magazine. It's about my experice at Pardes, Covid and my thoughts on Pluralism. You can read the full magazine here .

10 days of Tshuva and Yom Kippur 5781

Dear friends and readers, I have decided to diverge for this post (and maybe further posts also) from relating to you my experiece of my first months on Jerusalem to sharing some of the Torah I am learning here in the Holy City, also to be fair to the title of this blog that I have chosen. The topic of the last days has been Tshuva. Many of you may have already learned what this concept of Tshuva is and means, and why we are focusing on this so much during this time of year. That all staying valid, I want to share some Torah around this topic with you. The literal translation of "Tshuva" in Hebrew is "return". Most of us have learned that Tshuva means repentence, but the literal meaning of the word, does not support this translation. Repentence means "feel or express sincere regret or remorse about one's wrongdoing or sin", but this is not what Tshuva is primarily about. Tshuva means return. Return to what? you may ask, and rightfully so. The most prev

Zot Chanukka

Welcome back to my blog! I haven’t been writing here for a long time, but now this Chanukka I was inspired to write! Last week I stumbled upon a very sweet piece of Torah when searching for Chanukka on thepeoplestalmud and scrolling through the results (note: thepeoplestalmud is a directory and collection of Talmudic passages sorted by different categories and topics written in simple and entertaining language.). One of the results was this section in the Tractate Eruvin, which surprisingly talked about Chanukka, specifically about the Machloket (disagreement) between the School of Beit Hillel and the School of Bet Shammai about how to light the Chanukka candles. Bet Shammai held that one starts with 8 candles on the first night and decreases the number of candles with the consecutive nights. The reasoning draws on Chanukka’s origins in the Sukkot holiday when the number of bulls sacrificed each day decreased from 13 to 7 (8 days). Beit Hillel on the other hand held that on the firs

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