Orit Arfa is an author, journalist, painter, songwriter, scholar of Bible and theology, and rabbinical student.

A native of Los Angeles, Orit’s works are informed by the ethical dialectic that flows from her Jewish learning and tradition. Her father was born in a Displaced Persons camp in Germany to Holocaust survivors, while her mother was born in Iraq on the eve of the mass Iraqi Jewish emigration to Israel in the wake of anti-Semitic pogroms. Orit led a free Jewish life in America, having attended modern Orthodox schools, but the soul of a free spirit led her tailor-make her educational journey.

While most of her peers were either bar hopping or learning Torah, Orit went college-hopping in search of “The Truth.” After stints at Columbia University, Stern College for Women, Bar Ilan University, and UCLA, she graduated with a BA in Jewish studies and a minor in journalism from American Jewish University, where she also served as editor of the undergraduate newspaper.

While a student at Stern College, she interned at the Jewish daily Forward, then under editor Seth Lipsky. Her profile of renowned Israeli mentalist Uri Geller got noticed by The Jewish Journal of Los Angeles, where she has been a contributing writer for two decades. She moved to Israel in 1999 and continued to write about politics, society, lifestyle and travel for a variety of publications, most notably The Jerusalem Post and Jewish News Syndicate. To catch-up on the bar-hopping she missed in college, she pioneered the nightlife section of The Jerusalem Post.  She was then called back to Jewish scholarship and in 2003 completed her MA in Bible and Jewish Thought at the Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies (where she managed to finally uncover “The Truth”).

In 2005, Orit covered the IDF’s pullout from Gaza as well as its aftermath. Her research about the displaced residents of Gush Katif form the base of her debut novel, The Settler. In the novel, she also reconciles her own questions about faith and Israeli society.

In 2016, Orit moved to Berlin to write about German-Israel relations and reconnect with her European roots (from her father’s side). There, her work has been published in a variety of German magazines, blogs, and newspapers.

She currently lives in Berlin, where she completed her second novel, Underskin, a steamy Berlin-Tel Aviv love story. She is currently studying toward the rabbinate at Geiger College in Potsdam alongside her second Master’s degree, this one in Jewish theology.