About

Sharon Udasin is an American-Israeli journalist who took the plunge and immigrated to Jerusalem in September 2010. She currently serves as the environment/energy/innovation reporter for The Jerusalem Post, and prior to her Israel move she was a staff writer for two-and-a-half years at The NY Jewish Week. All opinions and commentary reflected on this blog are, however, entirely her own.

Up until June 2007, Sharon had little interest in Israel and the Middle East, until she graduated from the University of Pennsylvania and reluctantly had a taste of the “Birthright Kool-Aid,” so-to-speak.

But an eventual move to Israel wasn’t likely in the cards for Sharon, until she began her Jewish journalism career — first as a Columbia graduate student sifting through Lubavitch Crown Heights and then as a full-time writer for The Jewish Week. From there, her interest in Israel and all of its pitfalls grew, and she managed to visit the country on work assignments and various other trips 7 times within 3 short years.

And after a 6-week stint at an ulpan course in the summer of 2010, she finally decided to take a leap of faith — or perhaps lack thereof — and fill out the immigration forms.

Surprising herself yet again, Sharon will make her new home in Jerusalem, a city that beckons the religious of all shapes and sizes, brings them together and tears them apart.

Unlike most new immigrants to Israel, Sharon does not come to Jerusalem for religious reasons. Instead, she stands as a secular Jew in the middle of it all — observing a sacred culture rather than particular mitzvot — and becomes swept in the insanity that defines this holy city of peace.

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Copyright© 2011 Sharon Udasin | SacredAndInsane.com. All Rights Reserved.

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