Vika Krieger

Like I'd say to this day, I'm still quite traditionally observant.

And a lot of the rituals that I kept back then, I still keep today.

For example, like I keep a pretty strict Shabbat from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday.

Like I don't use my phone.

I don't use the internet.

I don't drive.

I don't use electricity.

I don't use money.

So I do a lot of things regularly.

from when i was growing up but the intentionality behind it is much different and the relationship of that act to god is very different and definitely going to college was a big part of that i mean i grew up in this insular world then there's like sort of tradition in my community that after you go to high school you go spend a gap year in israel studying in yeshiva jewish

study, school, institution, seminary.

And so I went to Israel for a year and I just literally from like 7.30 in the morning to like 10 o'clock at night, I just studied Talmud all day long, which is like obscure Jewish Aramaic legal codes.

For sure.

But like, I mean, it does boggle my mind when I look back to being like, holy shit, how did I spend so many hours a day studying what these, you know, first century, second, third century rabbis were saying about your ox gourd, my ox, and who pays who what under what conditions?

I was like, as like an 18-year-old.

And what were you getting out of it?

I think part of it was, like, it was just what was done in my community.

It is very intellectually stimulating, right?

How come?

This is, like, for the—we all have those friends that, like, graduated college and were so excited to go to law school because they wanted to study torts, you know?