The story

Shalom,

My name is Rebekah Zissel Aviva Morris. Over the years I have gone by half a dozen names, but you can call me Aviva.

I was born on May 4, 1993 in New Jersey, where I grew up. I attended public school half an hour south from nowhere, until I graduated high school in 2011 with a class of 600 students.

My father is a Reform Jew, my mother grew up traditional, my brother wears a black hat, my twin-sister is culturally Jewish, and I'm self-proclaimed Chassidal (neo-Chassidish/Dati Leumi; aka: Ba'al teshuva). As you can imagine, our family meals are never quiet.

After going to a high school semester program (called NFTY-EIE) on Kibbutz Tzuba in 2009 (Life in the Holy Land) my Jewish learning never stopped. Eventually, I had too many unanswered questions so I walked into Chabad on Shavuos in 2010.

After taking summer classes at Chabad, I was asked to teach a sixth grade Hebrew School class, which I did my senior year of high school. However, my mindset for the coming year was "save Israel now, worry about religion later." So in December of that year, I attended a Nefesh B'Nefesh meeting in NYC to figure out the logistics of joining the Israeli army. While wandering the booths, a women handed me a Shabbat.com card that I gladly took. Upon arriving home, I decided to give the site a whirl and through it I met an amazing Rabbi who called me out of the blue one summer morning asking if I'd like to go on an outdoorsy Torah program in Northern California, called Heritage Retreats. 

Two weeks later, I was in Israel, attending Michlelet Esther, on the Neve Yerushalayim campus in Har Nof, Jerusalem (The Unorthroprax Baalat Teshuva). 

But it didn't end there. One year later I returned to America, now stuck at the heart of the Brooklyn Jewish scene (what's an "out-of-towner"?) figuring out how to be me, survive college, and continuing growing in Shana Bet (Shana Bet for the Perpetually Perplexed).

But I had not had my fill. I returned home, to Israel, to go to a third year of seminary with girls struggling a similar battle of learning Judaism in the context of their lives and balancing on the secular/religious tight-rope (Hineni). 

But before I could make Aliyah, a school I applied to called. Apparently, I got in. So I packed my bags, moved to Cambridge and am currently trying to find Hashem in Harvard. 

It's been an interesting journey thus far...

According to my seminary yearbook, you'll find me in Tzfat with ten barefoot peyos-wielding children in the coming years.