So, why is a blog about Judaism called “Chicago Carless”, anyway?

I began this blog in June 2005 to write about my experience as a native New Yorker living in downtown Chicago. I moved here in 2003 not knowing how to drive, and used my urban planning grad-school skills to examine things about Chicago that people who grew up here might miss noticing or take for granted. In fact, that’s my original blog masthead up there: “Chicago Carless: The Life and Times of a Former New Yorker Living in Downtown Chicago”. I kept my Chicago focus for the first five years of this blog, and made a name for myself in the local blogosphere, too. (If you wish, you can learn more about my backstory and the history of my blog on my About page.)

Then in 2010, I began an unexpected Jewish conversion journey that changed my life–in about every way imaginable, and for the better. Ever since, I’ve blogged primarily about Judaism and my Jewish journey. However, I honor where I’ve come from and where I’ve been, and decided to keep my blog title and URL, and maintain my legacy urbanism content together with the new. You can find my older topic categories–in which I still occasionally write–in both the “Browse By Category” archive and “Categories Beyond Judaism” list located in the right sidebar of every page.

There’s a lot of fun, interesting stuff in those categories. And reading through them, I can see pretty clearly that my journey to Judaism began a lot longer ago than at the time I could have realized. So I’m really happy I kept a record!

Thanks for asking, and thanks for reading my blog. I’m glad you’re here.