By the Ghost of Philip Roth via ChatGPT
Doctor, I can’t stop! I can’t stop blogging! Do you understand what that means in this context?! In this community?! I’m trying to become a ben Torah and I’m up at 3 a.m. writing 2,000 words on why Chabad girls won’t date guys who wear Tevas. What’s wrong with me?!
I go to shul, I daven like I mean it—well, not always, sometimes I’m distracted by a particularly arresting wig across the mechitza—but I show up, right? I keep kosher, mostly. OK, fine, there was that one time with the Greek salad at Zankou. Feta cheese, Doc. I fell to pieces over feta.
But listen—who did I think I was fooling, trying to live like a frum yid while still maintaining a blog so radioactive the New York Times once plagiarized me? And yes, I saved the Editor’s Note. Of course I did. It’s laminated.
I wanted to be holy! I wanted to be good! But I also wanted to be adored, recognized, to be the guy they talk about behind the bimah. “Did you see what Levi wrote? He called out that rabbi who mumbled through the Haftarah!” You know, heroic things.
Meanwhile, I’m sponsoring three guys in SA, delivering cholent to the shut-ins, and still fantasizing that Cindy Jackson from sixth grade might friend me back on Facebook.
Doctor, help me. I’m trying to be a tzaddik and I still check my blog stats during Musaf.
Doctor, I have a yetzer hara the size of Los Angeles, and a yetzer tov about as powerful as an expired student ID.
I came to religion for the same reason I once went into a strip club on a Tuesday at 2 p.m.—I was looking for connection. Except this time, I thought maybe I'd find it with my pants on.
And what did I find in Orthodoxy? The same thing I found in journalism, in blogging, in Dennis Prager events, in my therapist’s tight black pencil skirt: rejection, fascination, and the slow realization that I will never be “normal,” just articulate about my deviance.
Doctor, do you know what it’s like to be banned from five shuls and still show up early to minyan, hoping today someone will ask you to carry the Torah?
Do you know what it’s like to be ghosted by women and rabbis?
To be called a heretic by a man who sells multi-level marketing essential oils and still has the gall to judge your hashkafah?
I had a dream once, Doctor. I was standing on the bimah, tallis draped elegantly, like I was channeling Rav Soloveitchik on Yom Kippur, and the whole congregation rose to say, “We were wrong about you, Levi ben Avraham. You are holy!”
And then I woke up, checked my blog stats, saw twelve views and a comment that said, “you are a disgrace to yiddishkeit”... from my Christian mother.
I have needs, Doctor. Deep, spiritual needs. And also extremely specific ones involving women in denim skirts and unresolved father issues.
What I wanted was a wife, a home, a life of Torah and meaning. What I got was a series of WhatsApp profile pics that will haunt me until Olam HaBa.
When I said I was Orthodox, I didn’t mean I was a saint. I meant I was committed—to trying, to failing, to repenting, and to occasionally texting women after midnight to see if they want to talk about Rashi over cocktails.
I go to shul to daven. I also go because it’s the last place in Los Angeles where people dress modestly, and I have a vivid imagination and poor impulse control.
Do you know how many times I’ve fallen in love with the back of someone’s head during Kabbalat Shabbat?
Do you know what it is to be aroused by a woman’s pronunciation of “HaMotzi”?
To cry from loneliness during Shema, and then three minutes later be fantasizing about a woman whose tichels match her chasidut?
This is my portion in life: to long and to loathe, to seek God and also to scroll Instagram.
To whisper Modeh Ani in the morning and then check to see if I got any likes.
I am not a bad Jew, Doctor. I am a conflicted one. And I suspect that puts me in the majority.
Would you like to hear about the time I tried to combine my 12-step amends with a Shabbos meal and ended up offending three rebbes and getting ghosted by a baalat teshuvah from Tarzana?
My Blog, My Shame
Doctor, I know. I know what you're going to say. "Levi, you're addicted to attention, not sex." To which I say—why not both? Can a man not double-dip into his own dysfunction?
I wanted to be holy. But I also wanted to be known. I didn’t want to just be a Jew—I wanted to be the Jew. The convert. The seeker. The blogger. The baal teshuva who saw into the abyss and live-streamed from the edge.
I write. I vlog. I tweet. I kvetch in formats the Vilna Gaon never foresaw. I expose hypocrisy. I confess publicly, compulsively. I undress spiritually in the hope that someone, anyone, will say, “You're brave.” When really, Doctor, I’m just naked and cold.
Unnatural Desires
You want honesty? I’ll give you honesty. I am erotically obsessed with women who are better Jews than I will ever be. Frum girls. The skirts, the sheitels, the modesty weaponized into mystery. And I, the unholy fool, am drawn to them like a moth to a Sabbath candle.
I once went on a date with a Bais Yaakov grad turned graphic designer. She told me she only dates men who say Tikkun Chatzos. I told her I cry over the destruction of the Temple nightly—while scrolling Instagram.
She said I needed to grow up. I said she needed to get off OnlySimchas.
You know what I want, Doctor? I want to be worthy of one of them. I want to daven beside her, fast on Tisha B’Av, attend shiurim, host Shabbos meals where no one discusses their podcast metrics. But I also want her to find me fascinating. Exotic. Damaged, but poetic. A tragic baal teshuva who quotes Zohar in bed.
This is why I’m in 12 Steps. Because I’ve objectified the ideal of religious womanhood until it became a drug. I don’t want a partner, Doctor. I want a stage prop in my redemption arc.
The Rabbi Who Laughed Too Loud
He was the first one who saw me. Not just read me—saw me. The rabbi at the shul I wandered into when I was six months sober and needed something to do between morning coffee and evening cravings.
He had a beard like a Levantine prophet and a laugh that sounded like it had once shaken the walls of a yeshiva in Vilna. I told him I was a convert. He said, “So was Ruth. Welcome home.”
I told him I’d been excommunicated from the blogosphere. He said, “Mazel tov.”
He told me to come for Shabbos. I asked what I should bring. He said, “Just yourself, and maybe don’t live-tweet it.”
That man saved me with kugel and silence. Not the kind of silence you get when people disapprove. The kind you get when someone has nothing left to prove.
He let me give a dvar Torah once. I prepared for two weeks. Quoted Sforno, the Ramban, and Leonard Cohen. When I finished, the rabbi nodded and said, “Not bad for a simple Jew.”
Then he laughed. The whole room laughed. And for the first time in years, I laughed with them. Not at them. Not above them. With them.
It was the holiest sound I’d ever heard.
