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18Forty is a new media company that helps users find meaning in their lives through the exploration of Jewish thought and ideas.
Avoiding Bad Advice and Unhealthy Change
Is change good or bad? Teshuva sounds like great change, a process of reinventing self for the better. That sounds like good…
How to Change Ourselves and Our Lives
Imagination is the doorway to higher destiny. We envision what life could look like under different conditions: if we lived elsewhere, if…
Teshuva Is Messy and Beautiful. That’s What Makes It Real.
American author Steven Pressfield knows what makes a compelling story, so he was taken aback when one producer repeatedly raised issues with…
How to Navigate Changing Faith and Religiosity
Religious change does not operate on a schedule, nor with any assumed convenience. Our relationship to faith, belief, and practice vary over…
Yom Kippur: The Jewish Time Traveler’s Manual
What lies at the center of Yom Kippur? When Rabbi Dovid Bashevkin completed Tractate Yoma, he wondered the same thing. In this…
Teshuva Is Endless
“Turn it over and turn it over, for everything is in it” (Pirkei Avot 5:22). I think of teshuva as a process…
Jonah: The Dynamics of Compassion
In this essay, I want to make two rather strange suggestions. One concerns the question of rachamim—compassion, as both a human and…
Letting Go of the Scary God
When I was in high school, I loved mock trial. For those unfamiliar with the “sport,” picture the Law & Order courtroom…
A Letter to Those Going Through Divorce—and Everyone Else
There are few things we frum Jews are more afraid of than divorce. Scroll through Jewish publications and you will find ominous…
Antonio García Martínez: Optionality and Choosing Judaism
In this episode of 18Forty, tech entrepreneur Antonio Garcia Martinez discusses his powerful “Why Judaism?” essay series, chronicling his conversion to Judaism…
Why Judaism?
“Stuck in a secular modernity that’s lost the plot, and that no longer knows what it is or where it’s going, I…
Judgment on Rosh Hashanah: Analysis of Content and Process in a Talmudic Aggadah
On Rosh Hashanah, all creatures pass before God like sheep (Mishnah Rosh Hashana 1:2). This famous idea is a curious one, riddled…