Welcome to Routless. I'm Liyalibowitz, and my guest today is Rabbi Gil Student.

First of all, hi, welcome to Routless.

Liel, it's so great to be here in these beautiful offices of Tablet Magazine.

Recording with you, it's great to see you again.

You've already betrayed your kindness.

Those who thankfully cannot see our abode right now will have to take my word for it.

It is anything but lovely. Here's my first question, team. Tell us how you became the great

rabbi-gill student, author, teacher, rabbinic authority, one of my favorite writers, humans, and Jewish thinkers.

You didn't start out on this path.

That's very kind of you, Lee.

So I'll say something outrageous just to set things on the right frame of mind.

Familiarly with how Justin Bieber was discovered,

just some guy on YouTube who got discovered became world famous.

So you might say on a very small scale,

on the Justin Bieber of Jewish scholarship.

You two were discovered by Asher.

I actually didn't know any of those details.

But basically I was a professional in the corporate world living a life of drudgery, and my solace was Jewish scholarship.

And when the internet got started, and I'm old enough to have been there when the internet got started, and when blogs became a thing, I started a blog just on a whim.

I saw someone else who had a blog.

I didn't like what he had to say.

And I decided I'll stop my own blog to argue with him.

...