Shalom,
My name is Rivkah Zissel Aviva Morris. Over the years I have gone by half a dozen names, but you can call me Aviva.
I was born on May 4, 1993 in New Jersey, where I grew up. I attended public school half an hour south from nowhere, until I graduated high school in 2011 with a class of 600 students.
My father is a Reform Jew, my mother grew up traditional, my brother is wears a black hat, my twin-sister is culturally Jewish, and I'm Religious Zionist. As you can imagine, our family meals are never quiet.
After going to a high school semester program (called NFTY-EIE) on Kibbutz Tzuba in 2009 ( "Life in the Holy Land") my Jewish learning never stopped. Eventually, I had too many unanswered questions so I walked into Chabad on Shavuos in 2010.
After taking summer classes at Chabad, I was asked to teach a sixth grade Hebrew School class, which I did my senior year of high school. However, my mindset for the coming year was "save Israel now, worry about religion later." So in December of that year, I attended a Nefesh B'Nefesh meeting in NYC to figure out the logistics of joining the Israeli army. While wandering the booths, a women handed me a Shabbat.com card that I gladly took. Upon arriving home, I decided to give the site a whirl and through it I met an amazing Rabbi who made me realize I want to worry about religion now, as opposed to later. During the summer he sent me to an outdoorsy Torah program, called Heritage Retreats, in Northern California. At Heritage Retreats, I met another amazing Rabbi that helped me apply and get into seminary.
Two weeks later, I was in Israel, attending Michlelet Esther, a smaller school on the Neve Yerushalayim campus in Har Nof, Jerusalem ("The Unorthroprax Baalat Teshuva"). I am now a working-on-it Torah-observant Jew. And it's been an interesting journey thus far...
My dream is to make alyiah and according to my seminary yearbook you'll find me in Tzfat with ten barefoot peyos-wielding children in the coming years.