{"id":21155,"date":"2010-07-15T13:02:09","date_gmt":"2010-07-15T21:02:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=21155"},"modified":"2020-07-23T10:21:47","modified_gmt":"2020-07-23T18:21:47","slug":"live-torah-talk-with-joey-kurtzman-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=21155","title":{"rendered":"Torah Talk With Joey Kurtzman"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This week&#8217;s Torah portion is <A HREF=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Devarim_%28parsha%29\">Deuteronomy<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><A HREF=\"http:\/\/lukeford.net\/archives\/updates\/080827.htm\">Joey and I started Torah talk in August of 2008<\/a>, the same month I took my first <A HREF=\"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?cat=10268\">Alexander Technique<\/a> lesson. <\/p>\n<p>Luke: &#8220;You were recently on a spiritual journey to India?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Joey: &#8220;My wife and I had just agreed to get divorced. One guy said to me, &#8216;India? You just got divorced. You should go to Brazil.&#8217; He probably had a point.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It was avodah zora (idol worship) non-stop. I started with a group of Catholics in India and did some of the worst avodah zora. I went to a Catholic compound in the jungle outside Mumbai. I spent a week there, some of the worst avodah zora a young Jew has done.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I didn&#8217;t get the wafer because I didn&#8217;t deserve it. I attended mass. I did kinda a confession.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Luke: &#8220;That must&#8217;ve taken a long time.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Joey: &#8220;I had a lot to get off my chest.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Also, the songs. The songs were begging Jesus to bathe us in his blood. I&#8217;d never seen this kind of hardcore&#8230; I was begging strangers. You get on your knees and you beg strangers for forgiveness.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I did 24 days of silent meditation.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Luke: &#8220;I can see you&#8217;ve totally changed.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Joey: &#8220;Probably the wrong time to do it. I spent the whole time thinking evil thoughts of my ex-wife, which she didn&#8217;t deserve.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I went to a mountain where they worship fire. If you want to worship idols, India is as good as it gets.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>For health reasons, Joey has a Diet 7-Up, cherry-flavored with antioxidants.<\/p>\n<p>Joey: &#8220;The Catholics in India were philo-semitic. I remember listening to one of the preachers talk about his visit to Israel, how the people were wonderful and the Arabs were rotten.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Luke: &#8220;It&#8217;s always great to be alone when you are miserable.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Here, open your drink. Let me hold your Torah so it doesn&#8217;t get covered with cherry-flavored Diet 7Up with antioxidants.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Joey: &#8220;I&#8217;ve traveled a lot in my life. I don&#8217;t think traveling really changes you.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This week&#8217;s Torah portion is Deuteronomy. Joey and I started Torah talk in August of 2008, the same month I took my first Alexander Technique lesson. Luke: &#8220;You were recently on a spiritual journey to India?&#8221; Joey: &#8220;My wife and &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=21155\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11800,590],"tags":[11802,11801,29981],"class_list":["post-21155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-joey-kurtzman","category-torah","tag-joey","tag-kurtzman","tag-torah"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21155"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21155\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":133250,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21155\/revisions\/133250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}