cool that somebody who never met me would want to spend a lot of money so I could visit a bunch of historical landmarks, learn some key phrases in Hebrew, and eat mountains of falafel and shwarma.
But to butcher an aphorism, lunches on Birthright are actually It started with the airport check-in.
And there is a rule for everything, including which shoelace to tie first and what to do with one’s facial hair.
OTD’ers who come to Irenstein never had the awkward, albeit formative, experiences the rest of us had—slow-dancing with some height-inappropriate partner in seventh grade, locking braces with someone in the back of a movie theater, getting to “second base.” Their questions for Irenstein range from the peculiar such as, “Is it OK to pay a girl to go out with me?
The premise is that it allows young people from the diaspora to connect with the once and future homeland, as well as form bonds and understanding with young Israelis of today.
It does this by putting you on a bus with other people around your age, usually centered around a group of university students, though there are also J-Date-style buses, Orthodox buses, and other themed trips.
I am left to think that the only possible sign of threat is the color of my skin, as 99% of the people who walked into the shul before me are white. After an away game with the 7th grade Talmud Torah soccer team, I experienced the sting of being “different” for the first time.
” We’re sitting at a table at Pret A Manger in Union Square, and Irenstein, a 35-year-old dating coach dressed neatly in a pale green Tommy Hilfiger button-down, is talking with Sam, a 29-year-old ex-Orthodox Jew.Plenty of interracial marriage when both people are Jewish.There are zero issues with Jews marrying other Jews, skin color is meaningless in Judaism.His speaking engagements have included Boston University, the University of Kentucky, and the Eliezer Society at Yale University.In 2010 Ma Nishtana launched the first online dating site catering to Jews of Color, Mosaic Matches, and in 2014 he founded the multi-culturally Jewish online magazine, JN Magazine.