Welcome to my blog, a work in progress, but a place for me to share my voice on a number of topics ranging from the personal to the rabbinic to thoughts and perspectives on Torah and anything else! While many who know me know me as a person who is not shy about sharing his opinion, the truth is I am quite shy about speaking and sharing my ideas and thoughts publicly. In this respect, this blog represents an opportunity for me to wade through those scary waters and hopefully put some ideas out there that will be meaningful and even inspiring to others. This is my goal. I hope your visit here will prove meaningful and if you are the slightest interested in reading or thinking about what I have to share I am grateful. May we always be able to share and enrich the world together!

Some background about me: I was born and grew up in a small town outside of Atlantic City known as Margate. I lived the first 17 years of my life in this town and am very fond of it, though my family ultimately left the Downbeach area and seldom make the time to go back. After high school, I spent four wonderful years in Israel learning in various Yeshivot, but mainly Reishit Yerushalayim (in the Old City of Jerusalem) and in Kerem B’Yavneh. I also spent a year in Bar Ilan University working on a dual degree in English Literature and Education, but after 55 credits of learning I returned back to the states to complete an undergraduate degree in Touro College in Psychology. While pursuing this degree, I was enrolled in Yeshiva University’s semicha (rabbinic ordination) program at RIETS, and after completing my undergraduate degree in a year and a half, made it midway through my third year in YU’s rabbinic program before taking a leave of absence to return to Israel and pursue one of my life’s dreams of serving in the armed forces.

In August of 2003 I joined the IDF’s Givaati Brigade and served for 15 and a half months in a combat unit, 8 months of which were spent in Gaza, often in forward positions, serving to protect Israel’s citizens from terrorist incursions and attacks. In June of 2004, the base that I was serving on was blown up by terrorists in one of the most destructive assaults on an Israeli base ever carried out in the strip. I and my fellow soldiers narrowly escaped the attack and it would serve to help shape and define my service and experience in the army.

After completing my service in the fall of 2004, I returned back to KBY and began teaching in the evenings in both Reishit as well as Yeshivat Netiv Aryeh. That summer of 2005 I worked as a bus leader for Mach Hach Ba’Aretz while the disengagement from Gaza was in full swing. The disengagement left me, like most of my fellow soldiers, depressed and downtrodden and at that point I gladly took up my father’s offer to return back to the states to become a 5th grade Judaics teacher at his school in West Hartford. The second weekend back from Israel, I met Nataly who I would become engaged to four months later and who I would marry that May. After a wonderful summer working for Hasbara Fellowships together, we both agreed I would need to complete my semicha and through a series of interesting events, instead of returning to YU (or opting to move us to Baltimore and enroll in Ner Yisroel) I chose to go to Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, a choice I was proud of for some time, but later came to very much regret.

In 2010 Nataly and I began working for the Orthodox Union as one of their campus rabbinic couples with the OU-JLIC program. We would spend four wonderful years at Rutgers University before being asked by the OU to move to Vestal, NY and open up the JLIC program at Binghamton University. While I worked hard to expand the opportunities for Orthodox students on campus there, Nataly worked as the Executive Director of the Hillel.

After four years of intense work and tremendous struggle, most notably from the campus Chabad whose leadership relentlessly worked to undercut, undermine, and circumvent as much of our impact and effectiveness in the Orthodox community as possible (and on the campus as a whole), even to the extent of demonstrably hurting the community itself, we decided it was time to move on and landed in Lower Merion Philadelphia where I took up a position as Judaic Studies faculty at the Jack M. Barrack Hebrew Academy, becoming their Director of Jewish Life in 2021, and working as a volunteer firefighter for the Lower Merion Fire Department.

Now, in the Summer of 2022, we have finally worked towards fulfilling our dream of making Aliyah, and are deep in the process of moving our family overseas. We hope to arrive by the end of this summer. I am blessed with five wonderful and amazing children and the most incredible and supportive wife in the world. We make a pretty good team if I do say so myself. This blog is a tribute to our shared success, as I would not be the person I am today without Nataly’s constant support and help in opening my eyes and experiences to growth, learning, giving, and Torah. I hope my experiences and perspectives are able to help others find their way and that my insights and writings find their mark on those who most dearly need to hear them. For all of you out there who find my words meaningful, please know that when all is said and done, this blog is really for you. And I hope you enjoy,