Aleph was born in 1983 and grew up in Atlanta. His parents came from a Christian background but raised him without religion. Despite this, he became interested in faith on his own and converted to Judaism through the Reconstructionist movement in his early 20s. He later said that his "decision to become a Jew was about ethical monotheism. God demands of us a righteous life."
Music career
One of Aleph's first bands was The Love Drunks, which released their self-titled debut album through Alive Records in 2006. In 2007, Aleph formed the punk band Can Can with guitarist Mary Collins and drummer Josh Lamar, whom he met through the local music scene. As the band's songwriter, Aleph incorporated subtle lyrical references to his Jewish faith. The band released two albums, All Hell and their JDub Records debut Monsters & Healers, before going on hiatus in 2011. During the hiatus, Aleph and Collins formed a no waveside project called Ice Bats.
PunkTorah
In April 2009, after an unpleasant experience at a synagogue in Atlanta, Aleph began recording his own divrei Torah on the weekly parsha and posting them on YouTube under the name PunkTorah, referring to his background as a punk singer. Following the popularity of the videos, he co-founded PunkTorah with Michael Sabani as a 501 non-profit, under which he created , a combination blog, multimedia network, and online community aimed at disaffected Jews. Aleph and Sabani started a fundraising campaign in August 2010 to create , an expansion of the online distance minyanim they had been hosting via PunkTorah. That same year, they founded another PunkTorah subsidiary, NewKosher, through which they published Birkat Hamazon, a bentcher incorporating recipes, essays, and poetry from Jewish writers like Matthue Roth, Leon Adato, and Michael Croland. Aleph is the founder and rosh yeshiva of , a virtual school training students for Jewish spiritual leadership. The yeshiva currently includes an online Jewish conversion course. In January 2019, Aleph became the director of innovation for Pluralistic Rabbinical Seminary, an online rabbinical school. The school includes Orthodox, Conservative and Reform rabbis educating and ordaining post-denominational rabbinical students.
