Writing
Essays, reflections, and notes. Subscribe via RSS.
- Engelmann's Crutch (ja)
Walk into a Direct Instruction classroom and the first thing you notice is the rhythm. The teacher asks a question. Pauses. Says "get ready." Snaps her fingers. Thirty kids answer in unison. Three seconds later, another question. Another snap. Another chorus. Ten responses per minute, per kid, for forty minutes straight.
May 04, 2026 - The Cost Curve Will Win (ja)
Jewish day school costs $14,000 to $32,000 a year — and that's before you add fees, fundraising obligations, and the guilt trip. A family with three kids is spending more than a mortgage. And what do they get for it? A system that, by its own community's admission, can't teach kids to speak Hebrew after twelve years of trying.
March 31, 2026 - Skip the News. Read the Analysis. (per)
When COVID hit, I was glued to the news. Refreshing case counts, reading every hot take, tracking every policy shift. When October 7th happened, it was worse — scrolling Twitter for the accounts that actually had real info, cycling through non-stop WhatsApp groups, some of which turned into sending money and supplies. It felt like I was doing something.
March 31, 2026 - How to Use Claude Code on Your Phone (ai)
I run Claude Code from the back of an Uber. From the couch. From anywhere I have my phone. It's the same full CLI I use at my desk — same context, same projects, same session I walked away from an hour ago. There's something freeing about being able to partner with Claude on whatever you're working on, wherever you are.
March 31, 2026 - What I've Been Waiting to Teach My Son (ab)
I named my son Yosef Maor. It means "he will add light." At his bris, I told our family why. I was honoring Rabbi Fohrman's analysis of chapter after chapter of the Joseph story. Joseph the dreamer. Did his brothers really sell him? Why didn't he send a letter home to his dad? Was civil war averted by Yehuda confronting Joseph? And many, many more echoes before and after. My youngest son's name wa
March 31, 2026 - Trust Your Instincts, Even in the Dark Forest (per)
A wizard takes a girl from her village and tries to teach her magic his way — precise, structured, by the book. She's terrible at it. She keeps failing. But when she stops trying to be him and starts doing magic her way — messy, instinctive, rooted in who she actually is — she becomes more powerful than he ever expected.
March 30, 2026 - Jewish Alpha School — What We're Building (ja)
Here's what I'm actually building.
March 29, 2026 - What Mastery Means (And Why We Gave Up On It) (ja)
A kid scores 70% on a 3rd grade math test and moves on to the next unit. That means 30% of the material — the concepts, the connections, the building blocks — didn't land. But the system doesn't care. The class has to keep moving.
March 22, 2026 - The 2-Hour School That Actually Works (ja)
I'm standing in a classroom at Alpha School in New York City, watching a guide work with a kid who doesn't want to do his work. In a traditional school, I know exactly what happens next: a warning, then a consequence, then the principal's office. The system has one tool — compliance — and when it fails, the kid gets labeled.
March 15, 2026 - You Can't Reform a System From Inside It (ja)
Here's a number that should make you angry: over $100 million. That's what American Jewish institutions have spent trying to teach their children Hebrew over the past century. The result? Cole Aronson, writing in Mosaic, estimates that roughly 3% of day school graduates can hold a Hebrew conversation. After twelve years of schooling.
March 08, 2026 - The Back Seat (ja)
It's the winter of 1991. I'm seventeen years old. I'm sitting uncomfortably in the back seat of my parents' rental car as my father drives through the hills of Jerusalem. I can smell the dry dusty air. I'm staring through the windshield at the dirty roads. And most importantly I'm trying to ignore what my father is saying.
March 01, 2026 - Why I Built My AI Second Brain (ai, productivity, personal)
I've always believed that personal productivity tools should be deeply personal. The off-the-shelf solutions force you into their model of how work should happen. But that's not how minds actually work.
January 25, 2026 - Early Career Failures (career, lessons, per)
When I graduated college at 20, I thought I was on top of the world. I landed a job at Price Waterhouse--one of the top firms at the time. Out of 30--40 Yeshiva University grads who joined the "Big Eight" firms that year, only three of us made it to Price. I was proud. I was also way too full of myself.
December 04, 2025 - What I'm Doing Now (November 2025) (now, projects, per)
Updated Sunday, November 30, 2025, from my apartment in New York.
November 30, 2025 - The Diplomat: Redemption Arc (tv, per)
The Diplomat on Netflix was a revelation. The redemption arc of a verbally abusive spouse to a loving one revealed to me how accepting I am of harsh language in the name of truth and practicality.
January 02, 2025 - Black Dove: What is Truth? (tv, per)
Black Dove on Netflix must have been written by a philosopher meditating on what is truth. The spy story is an excellent canvas to examine how ultimately what we believe is subjective and actually rejects an external truth.
January 01, 2025