I grew up with very little religious training. Actually, like, none. I think what Jewishness I felt as a kid stemmed almost entirely from this atrocity in our family tree.

Why do I have an issue with banks? They have their greedy fingers in everyones money. No other industry has the power to deduct a bill or fees directly from your own bank account without so much as a notice.

We moved up to Oregon when I was eight, and I think the radical absence of Jewish life here might have strangely made me feel more Jewish. It's a contextual thing I guess.

Yo can’t reason someone out of something he didn’t reason himself into.

I'm interested in the ongoing war between the individual and community. That inner dissent against whatever group is surrounding you. No one wants to cede their selfhood to a group, right? And yet no one can exactly live outside the group, either. Even the most obstinate survivalist probably lives in some telepathic communion with all the other obstinate survivalists out there in the woods.

I think these large bureaucratic institutions are created in some way explicitly to inoculate anyone from actual responsibility, to create a much more diffuse and blameless kind of society.

I'm the type of spiritual person that doesn't speak openly about their spirituality. Irony is probably my religion.