When we first met we were both living in Crown Heights, Brooklyn…far from where we came from in every sense of the word.

Asher was born and raised in Brattleboro, Vermont. He spent his days running through forests and fields, competing as a cyclist and snowboarder, running a radio show and composing lyrics and music for his band, The Crispies.

By the time he got to college he discovered his brain and his voracious love for reading. 15,000 books later, this bibliomaniac hasn’t stopped. He has a passion for poetry, literature, art, science, music, technology, medicine, and anything and everything else. He also discovered his love for philosophy which introduced him to the great existential thinker, Emmanuel Levinas. Levinas, in turn, introduced him to the study of Judaism. This study led him to moving (temporarily) to Crown Heights, Brooklyn, where he became a rabbinical student which resulted in Asher becoming Rabbi Asher Crispe…a Chassidic Rabbi.

Sara Esther meanwhile was raised in the Los Angeles Valley which she spent the rest of her life trying to deny but her valley girl accent gave it away. She grew up loving the ocean, waves and sun and never thought she could ever handle or appreciate the cold and snow. For years she dreamt of being a criminal prosecutor for she was always fighting for the underdog and demanding justice. Instead, she decided to become a persuasive writer where she could make her arguments without anyone being there to overrule.

While not raised religiously observant, a year studying abroad in Israel during her junior year in college impacted her so greatly that she returned to the US, graduated college, and then moved to Crown Heights, Brooklyn to delve seriously into Jewish studies.

Then, in 1996, while both Asher and Sara Esther were living in Brooklyn, they were introduced to one another. One of their first dates took place at the Brooklyn College Library where Sara Esther was doing her Master’s Program and was stuck in the library completing a paper. Asher, loving libraries, offered to meet her there and help with said paper. The rest was history. They married in June of 1997.

From then until now we had four beautiful children and have lived in Jerusalem, Florida, Philadelphia and now we are back in Vermont. We live on a dirt road, in a very rural town in Southern Vermont, where there are definitely more cows than people. There are maybe 20 Chassidic Jews in the entire State, and we are 6 of them.

But we love that we seem so different so that when people get to know us, they can realize just how similar to them we actually are. And that is the goal of this site. Lumin Story. It is to shine light where it is dark, to add more light where it is lacking and to help us all see our inner light and how that light is the same, no matter how different things seem on the outside. And ultimately, to enforce the idea that we are all lamplighters, with the power not only to shine our light but to ignite all those unlit wicks that are all around us and all within us.