After two straight weeks of emotional, tear-stained writing about war and mourning and meaning, my wife insisted that it was time to lighten the mood. One of my community members told me at the kiddush on Shabbat that she was fed up of with having to walk around with dark glasses and a packet of Kleenex.

So I’m writing about something far more baffling: my calendar.

You see, I live what can only be described as a schizoid existence. I’m a rabbi in Israel and a physician in Manchester. I spend my time commuting not only between countries, but between entire personas. In Israel, I discuss God, the weekly Torah portion, and which bakery makes the best rogelach. In Manchester, I assess blood tests, consult on patient care, and occasionally explain to people that no, paracetamol cannot fix a broken leg.

A good chunk of my medical work is expert witness reporting for clinical negligence cases. This means I spend hours poring over detailed records, medical jargon and timelines, all in the hopes of offering a clear, unbiased opinion. It’s a world of deadlines, precision, and very polite lawyers.

Then I get on a flight, land in Israel, and the next morning I’m giving a shiur on whether King Saul suffered mental illness, or how to put on tefillin if you are ambidextrous.

Doctor holds a stethoscope in front of a hospital background (illustrative) (credit: INGIMAGE)
Doctor holds a stethoscope in front of a hospital background (illustrative) (credit: INGIMAGE)

Lots of WhatsApp

And then there’s WhatsApp.

I’m almost in more WhatsApp groups than there are mitzvot. There’s one for each of the separate shiurim I give (currently five, each with its own title and emoji). Several more for the shul. One for the gabbaim (synagogue managers), one for the community, and one that the community doesn’t see – two in Hebrew, two in English – and one a reminder Whatsapp just for me.

Then there’s the doctors’ group, the rabbis’ group, the rabbis-who-are-also-doctors group, and yes, the mohalim (circumcisers) group! Sometimes I wake up to 276 unread messages across 14 chats, half of which are halachic questions, the other half are blurry pictures of rashes. Occasionally the two overlap, which is especially awkward when someone asks whether their baby’s brit milah wound is healing normally and I respond with a link to a shiur on the covenant of the flesh.

Living in multiplicity

BUT WHEN the dizziness from all the toggling between roles begins to take hold, I remind myself: This is actually a very Jewish problem.

Our greatest heroes didn’t fit into tidy professional boxes.

Rabbi Akiva was a shepherd. Rashi was a winemaker. Hillel the Elder chopped wood for a living. The Baal Shem Tov was a schoolteacher, a healer, and something of a coach driver. Even the Talmud tells us about Reb Yochanan the Shoemaker – Hasandler – who mended sandals by day and souls by night. If LinkedIn had existed in the time of the geonim (6th-11th century CE talmudic sages), it would’ve had a serious formatting problem.

Being a Jew has never been about one career or one calling.

It’s about layers. Identities in motion. Shepherd and sage. Doctor and mohel. Comedian and comforter.

It’s not that we’re unfocused – it’s that we’re built to live in multiplicity. One eye on heaven, one hand on the job, and one foot trying not to trip over the WhatsApp cable.

And maybe most importantly: we never stop building. Even in times of darkness, our people seem to have a mysterious instinct to plant, to grow, and to just show up.

Making aliyah – and babies – during war

SINCE OCTOBER 7, in a year that most would assume would deter people from boarding a plane to Israel (if you can actually find an airline willing to fly here other than El Al, for which you need a small mortgage – over 43,000 people have made aliyah.

Let that sink in.

Forty-three thousand souls who looked at the chaos and fear and said, “I’m coming home.” And over half of them are between the ages of 18 and 35. Young people with their whole lives ahead of them, choosing to plant their futures in this complicated, noisy, stubborn, beautiful little land.

And as if that wasn’t enough, there’s this: Since October 7, approximately 243,000 Jewish babies have been born in Israel. That’s nearly a quarter of a million cries and giggles – and a lot of circumcisions. That’s a nation saying, “You can hurt us – but you will not stop us.”

You can feel it in the energy of the streets – there’s grief, yes. But there’s also life: weddings still take place (sometimes in bomb shelters), circumcisions still happen (sometimes with IDF uncles Zooming in from Gaza), and children still run barefoot through sprinklers shouting “Abba, ani rotzeh glida!” – “Dad, I want some ice cream!”

Loud and layered life

So yes, I may be a Manchester-based physician who moonlights as an Israeli rabbi (or is it the other way around?) – and yes, I may occasionally send Torah sources to a solicitor and wound-care instructions to the shul board – but I wouldn’t change a thing.

This is what Jewish life looks like. It’s loud and layered. It’s WhatsApp and weddings. It’s birth announcements alongside battle briefings. It’s holding pain and joy in the same hand – and still reaching out with the other.

Here’s to all of us navigating our patchwork lives. May we find clarity amidst the chaos, purpose within the pileups, and, at the very least, the strength to mute the ubiquitous WhatsApp group when it all gets too much.

The writer is a rabbi and physician who lives in Ramat Poleg, Netanya. He is a co-founder of Techelet-Inspiring Judaism.