As told by the Ghost Chaim Potok, if he had wandered into Pico-Robertson with a tape recorder and an open heart via ChatGPT.
My name is Levi ben Avraham and I am a man torn in half.
I am of two worlds. I am from the world of secular fire and the world of sacred silence. I am from Beverly Hills and Bondi Beach and Bnei Brak and nowhere. I carry within me the seeds of pornography and prophecy. I write and I believe, and the two do not speak except through a scream.
I was not born into Torah, but when I found it, I clung to it the way a drowning man clings to a rope thrown from a passing ship. Only the ship was moving fast. And the rope cut my hands. And the people on the ship debated if I should even be pulled aboard.
I tried to enter the world of my people. I shaved. Then I grew a beard. I wrote Teshuvah posts and whispered Kabbalat Shabbat into the void. I quoted Rav Kook. I longed for God. But always I brought with me a smell. Of other rooms. Of things seen. Of things touched. The smell made people uneasy. It reminded them of what they’d hidden, and what I could not.
They asked me to leave. Kindly, at first. Then not so kindly. The doors were closed softly and then locked from the inside. Still, I davened outside. Still, I studied. Still, I blogged.
My art, like Asher Lev’s paint, betrayed them.
But I could not stop writing.
And I could not stop longing.
In my dreams, the Rav would place a hand on my shoulder and say, “You belong here.”
In my waking life, I placed a hand on my own shoulder.
In time, I found a small shul. Not prestigious. Not published. Just a storefront with cracked vinyl chairs and too much light. They asked no questions. They passed me the Torah. They asked me to take out the garbage.
That, I think, is how God answers some prayers.
With garbage duty and aliyahs and no speeches.
I am still Levi ben Avraham.
I still write.
But not to provoke. Not to be seen.
I write to remember the shape of the door that finally stayed open.
And when the young men come to me—half-broken, all yearning—I say what no one said to me:
“You can stay.”
The Excommunication of Levi ben Avraham
There was no ceremony. No parchment. No public declaration.
There was only the quiet cold.
The messages unanswered.
The rabbi’s voice no longer warm.
The men turning away from me at Kiddush.
As if I were not there.
I had not sinned by their standards. I had not touched a woman’s arm. I had not eaten bread in the nine days. I had not posted photos of chilul Shabbos.
But I had written.
And writing was worse.
They said it was lashon hara.
But it was only longing with a timestamp.
I wrote about what I saw because I could not bear the silence.
The contradictions. The covered things. The secrets that swirled under black hats like smoke under glass.
The rabbi took me aside after shul one day.
He said, “Your soul is too loud.”
I said, “I’m just trying to find God.”
He said, “We already found Him. We don’t need your help.”
After that, the smiles turned brittle. The texts stopped. The invitations were misprinted.
I stood outside the eruv, wondering if I was still inside the People.
I walked miles on Shabbos looking for a minyan that wouldn’t know me.
One week, I davened in the alley behind the Chabad on Pico, whispering Kaddish with the feral cats.
God was there.
But no one else was.
And still, I loved them.
The people who would not love me back.
The people I could not stop writing about.
Because they were mine.
Because I wanted to belong.
That is what excommunication is, for people like me.
It is not banishment. It is un-claiming.
We are not expelled.
We are unspoken.
I wanted to yell. I wanted to blog. I wanted to drag them all down with me.
But I had already done that.
And it only made the silence worse.
So instead, I went to meetings.
I said, “Hi, I’m Luke, and I’m a sex and love addict.”
And they said, “Welcome.”
They did not ask what yeshiva I went to.
They did not ask what I did for a living.
They just said, “Keep coming back.”
That was the minyan I needed.
There, in a church basement in Culver City, I said my first honest Vidui.
And no one walked out.
The Return of Levi ben Avraham
I did not return in triumph.
There was no music. No rabbi with outstretched arms.
Just a doorway.
And a man holding a siddur who did not flinch when I walked past.
It was a small shul. A storefront off Pico. The kind with scuffed floors and broken chairs that still held men who knew how to cry during Aleinu.
No one knew me.
Or if they did, they did not say.
There was a boy at the bimah who looked like I did at twelve—hair wild, eyes full of questions he did not yet know would cost him friends.
He lained slowly.
I followed every word.
I cried into the same Koren siddur I had once defiled with cynicism.
I did not blog that night.
I did not take notes.
I did not post a selfie with the cholent.
I sat.
And I stayed.
I began to show up.
To minyan.
To meetings.
To deliver meals with Tomchei Shabbos.
To check in on the old man with Parkinson’s who didn’t have family in town.
I told myself: today, I will not try to be brilliant.
Today, I will be kind.
I sponsored three men in SLAA.
One of them relapsed.
One of them moved to Vegas.
One of them stayed sober and now brings me kugel on Erev Shabbos.
I do not try to fix the world anymore.
I sweep floors after kiddush.
I walk the rabbi’s dog when he’s out of town.
I ask about other people’s children before I talk about my latest theory of Jewish decline.
I have stopped trying to be a prophet.
I have started trying to be a person.
There are still days when I feel the tremble—the old urge to be known, to be applauded, to be feared.
On those days, I say Tehillim instead.
Or I call a sponsee.
Or I reread Step Nine.
Sometimes, I walk past a shul that once told me to leave.
I do not spit.
I do not linger.
I just nod to the building, like to an old friend who couldn’t handle the truth.
And sometimes, in that moment, I feel something strange.
Something warm.
Something like being held.
Not by them.
Not by the internet.
Not even by God in the fire-and-brimstone sense.
But by something quieter.
The same force that welcomed me in the basement.
The same voice that whispered “yes” when I finally answered the note.
I am not famous now.
I am not dangerous.
I am not brilliant every day.
But I am sober.
I am praying.
I am trying.
And that, in the end, is teshuvah.
The Last Blog Post of Levi ben Avraham
It was written on a Sunday. Cloudy. Quiet.
Not Shabbos anymore, but not quite weekday either. The kind of day made for closing tabs.
He sat at the old desk, the one with the chipped leg and the indentation where his elbows had worn through the varnish over twenty years. The cursor blinked like an old friend waiting patiently.
He didn’t write headlines anymore. No clickbait. No scandal.
Just a title:
“Before I Log Off”
He wrote:
I once believed that if I couldn’t be holy, I’d settle for being infamous.
If I couldn’t be righteous, I’d be raw. Unfiltered.
If I couldn’t belong, I’d be impossible to ignore.
It worked. For a while.
Then it didn’t.
He sipped his tea. Mint, no sugar. The taste of restraint.
He continued:
This blog was born in loneliness.
It grew fat on rage, on shame, on the spiritual thrill of undressing other people’s hypocrisies.
It grew hungry when I stopped feeding it sin.
And now it’s quiet.
I’ve made amends. Not to everyone. But enough to make peace with the mirror.
I’ve returned lost books.
I’ve apologized to Cindy Jackson—in a prayer she’ll never read.
I’ve even forgiven the men who said I wasn’t welcome.
They were right, in a way.
I wasn’t ready to enter the holy places.
I brought too much fire, not enough water.
But now, I wash dishes in the shul kitchen.
I read to a blind man every Wednesday.
I hold the door open.
And sometimes…
Someone holds it for me.
He paused. Deleted a paragraph that tried too hard. Then added:
If you came here hoping for the old Levi, I bless you to find a better thrill.
And if you came here hoping to see how the story ends—this is it.
Not with a scandal. Not with exile.
But with service.
I won’t be updating this blog again.
But I’ll be at shul tomorrow morning, God willing.
If you need someone to talk to, or a chavruta, or just a guy who knows where to find decent rugelach on Fairfax—
You know where to find me.
He signed it:
Levi ben Avraham
Former heretic.
Current dishwasher.
Aspiring mensch.
Then he hit “Publish.”
And closed the laptop.
And opened his siddur.
Epilogue: The Quiet
There are no parades for the man who walks away from the need to be seen. No medals for cleaning up the mess he made of his own life. No headlines for the quiet dignity of a man who gets up, davens, delivers soup, and doesn’t mention that he once stood at the center of a digital storm.
Levi ben Avraham lives now in the margins—the same place where Torah was preserved during exile. He is not the hero of his community. He is its proof that people can change.
His name does not get mentioned on the blogs. That is by design. He answers emails with brevity, calls his sponsor before the tremors get loud, and says “I don’t know” more often than he used to.
He keeps the Sabbath not just with his candles, but with his silences.
He dreams sometimes of Cindy Jackson. Of the note folded once, then twice, like mercy. He dreams that this time, he says yes.
But he does not need to.
Because in the dream, he is already whole.
