Author: Shira Leibowitz Schmidt

If you were going to check your analytical skills at the door, don’t come into Nechama’s beit midrash.

I found her in the cafeteria, identifying her by her trademark beret. Ever practical, she told me to take a tray and get some lunch. “If you want to study Torah, you have to eat,” she said, inverting the usual conception of Torah as nourishment.