Born in the early 1960s, I was a typical Jersey boy:

lost and clueless in the spiritual wasteland of suburbia. As a conservative Jew, I learned at a Hebrew Day School where I was fed the secularized gluten-free version of my own tradition. I had everything I needed, wanting for nothing and wanting nothing. Education meant school and school was pointless. In my senior year of high school, I was offered an ulpan program, five months of working on a religious kibbutz and learning Hebrew. For the first time in my life, I was awake...