Born in 1981 to Eastern European parents, I grew up carrying a feeling I assumed lived in everyone — a quiet sense that life was deeper, interconnected, and charged with meaning. Judaism was always present in my life, but mostly as culture, memory, and inheritance.

 

That changed on October 7th, 2023.

 

Realizing that the same hatred my grandmother escaped in Hungary in 1944 was not buried in history, but still alive in the modern world, forced me into a reckoning. I needed to understand why. Why the Jew remained a target. Why an ancient hatred could survive into an age that calls itself enlightened.

 

In searching for answers, I found the Chabad movement.

 

There, in the warmth of weekly Shabbat tables, prayer, song, and community, something in me began to realign. The Shema, the Amidah, the weekly Torah portions — they gave language to truths I had always felt but could never fully articulate. Judaism stopped feeling like something inherited and became something alive.

 

I understood that if I allowed hatred to harden me, then darkness would simply reproduce itself through me. The challenge, instead, was to become light within it.

 

Eruv is my attempt at that.

 

Inspired by the One.