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Life starts in Chicago
My parents have me, their first born son, and join a synagogue that they hope will be accepting of an intermarried family in Evanston, IL. The sermon that Rosh Hashanah was on the evils of intermarriage... My parents found a great Jewish preschool in the area and I came back a week after having started asking where was the cha- cha- challah (hard word to say for a kid,) and all the other shabbos accouterment. And that, as far as they tell it, is what started us on our Jewish journey as a family. -
We move to Boston
We move to Boston, a much more open community to our family. Plus, all of our Jewish and non-Jewish family lives here. We start having weekly Shabbat meals with my grandparents and join the synagogue my mother had belong to as a child. -
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Dad starts to expirement
My father, on his own path of study towards conversion, decides that Michael (my brother) and I should learn and be involved with all sorts of different Jewish educational programs from many different streams of Judaism. This often meant that we would go to three different types of Jewish school in a day, starting off in a Reform morning program, going somewhere else a little more Conservative for the afternoon, and then during school breaks anything was possible. -
First day of Orthodox day camp
My father decides to sign us up for the Modern Orthodox section of our Jewish day camp that we had been going to for years. He asks us to try it for two weeks, and if we don't like it we can leave. We don kippot and tzizit (my mother has no idea what to do with them the first time the show up in the laundry,) and we end up being Orthodox every summer, for years. -
First trip to Israel
I go to Israel with the 9th grade students who I had been learning with at Temple Israel for years along with students from two other shuls. One of our leaders was Lesley Litman, who will mentor me for years, give me my first job in Jewish education, and eventually gives me my first classroom as a head teacher. On this trip I meet with friends from back home who had moved back to their home in Jerusalem. -
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Working as a Special Needs One-to-One
Lesley Litman gives me my first Jewish education job working as a one-to-one aid in a supplementary Jewish education program. I spend these years working mostly with autistic students and one's with asperger's syndrome. I learn a tremendous amount from the lead teachers, helping them facilitate lessons. -
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College and a few more years on top of that...
Every part of me becomes less connected to Judaism. That is besides my role in Jewish Education. I become a head classroom teacher, begin to teach more than one grade, and create a tutoring empire. I also begin working for my college's shuttle service and rise in the ranks till I meet daily with the university's chief of police. Let's just say my identity is becoming rather confusing. -
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Welcome to trying, very hard, to become a rabbi
I enter into Rabbinical school and promptly leave Temple Israel where I have worked and studied all my life. I start working in several other area shuls. I eventually start teaching adult ed and high school classes as well. My own skills were strengthened through my l studies at Hebrew College and it starts to show.