Many Passions, One Root

My wife often reminds me that most sensible people focus on one project at a time.

Apparently, running several at once is not considered normal behaviour.

She may be right.

But the truth is that everything I build comes from the same place. The same passions. The same values. The same roots.

Tribe613 simply became the umbrella that brings them all together.

---

Left Brain, Right Brain

I began my professional life in the world of design and development.

From a very young age I loved the strange dance between creativity and logic. The left brain and the right brain working together. Designing something beautiful, then figuring out how to make it actually work.

That path led me into a successful freelance career working with some large agencies, followed by several years running my own digital marketing agency.

It was fast, exciting, creative work.

And then life changed in the best possible way. My kids were born.

At that moment I made a decision that surprised a lot of people: I stepped away from my career and became a stay-at-home dad.

Those years were some of the most important and rewarding of my life.

---

The Birth of Frootie

Like many parents, I suddenly found myself thinking a lot more about food.

What we were feeding our children. What was actually inside the things on supermarket shelves. And whether it was possible to make food that was genuinely delicious, nutritious and something you’d be proud to feed your own kids.

That question became an obsession.

Experiment after experiment, failure after failure in the kitchen eventually turned into a range of plant-based desserts and products that were healthier, allergen-friendly and still indulgent.

That was the birth of Frootie. Food that loves you back.

---

When Necessity Becomes Software

But food businesses have a hidden complexity.

• Recipes.
• Ingredients.
• Allergens.
• Costs.
• Nutrition.
• Scaling from test batches to production.
• Food-compliant labelling.

I needed software that could handle all of that.

Nothing on the market did what I needed. And what did exist was priced for big companies, not a small bootstrapped startup.

So I did what developers do when the right tool doesn’t exist. I built it.

Over the course of a year I created what eventually became Seder Kitchen. A system that could manage recipes, calculate nutrition, generate compliant labels, and scale production recipes in seconds.

I built it for myself. But eventually it became clear that it was too useful to keep to myself.

Today it’s a standalone platform designed to help other food businesses run their kitchens with the same tools I built for mine. And yes, I still use it almost every day with Frootie.

---

7 October

Then came 7 October 2023.

Like so many Jews around the world, my entire emotional landscape shifted overnight. I felt shock. Disbelief. Grief. Anger.

But more than anything, a deep and unfamiliar vulnerability. Not fear for myself. Fear for what the world might become for our children.

Suddenly, I found myself thinking about things I hadn’t thought about in years.

My great-uncle in Paris, who survived the camps, the number tattooed onto his arm. No one ever spoke about his story.

Memories of my grandparents in Europe and Israel.

Passover tables filled with stories and laughter.

The words we recited every year:

“Next year in Jerusalem.”

The smell of freshly baked Yemenite bread cooked on a rock.

Shabbat dinners around warm tables filled with loud conversation about who we were and where we came from.

Something inside me woke up again. A light that had lain dormant for years suddenly burst into flames.

---

Teshuvah

I found myself reconnecting in ways I hadn’t expected.

Buying vegan tefillin. Left-handed ones, because yes… that’s actually a thing.

Laying tefillin each morning and reciting prayers I hadn’t said in years.

Prayers to a G-d I wasn’t even sure I believed in anymore.

But belief wasn’t really the point. Connection was.

This was my teshuvah. My return. A reconnection with my roots, my people and my story.

And as a father, it suddenly became incredibly important that my children knew that story too.

---

Bedtime Stories Become a Book

So I started doing something simple.

At bedtime, I began telling my kids stories. Stories about our past. About Abraham and Moses. About Rachel and Tzipporah.About the people who shaped Jewish history.

But I also began telling them stories about modern figures. People who stood up in moments when it mattered. People who pushed back against lies. People who defended truth and the Jewish people even when it was difficult.

Ordinary people doing extraordinary things. Legends.

And so Legends of the Light was born.

---

One Umbrella

Looking at it from the outside, it probably does look like I’m running several unrelated projects.

A tech platform. A food brand. A book series. But to me they all grow from the same roots.

Technology. Food. Family. Israel. Am Yisrael.

That’s what Tribe613 really is. Not just a brand. A home. A place where I can bring these passions together. A place where I can write, build, cook, create and share ideas. A place to explore what it means to be Jewish today in a world that sometimes seems determined to misunderstand us. Because if the last couple of years have taught me anything, it’s this:

Most people don’t hate Jews because they truly know us. They hate a version of us they’ve been told to believe in. A caricature. A distortion. A story written by someone else.

So Tribe613 is also my small attempt to help rewrite that story. To show who we really are. A people who argue loudly around dinner tables. Who tell stories to our children at night. Who create technology, food, art, music and ideas that make the world better. A people who, despite thousands of years of being pushed down, have never stopped trying to bring a little more light into the world.

That’s what drives everything I build. And if something I write here helps someone feel a little more connected, a little more proud or even just a little more curious about who we really are…

Then it’s all been worth it. Because sometimes the most powerful thing we can do is simply tell our story.