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Shalom! Peace! Greetings!
My name is Moris Hoch | משה זאב בן אריה ליב | I was born on February 6, 1948, | כו’ שבט, תש”ח | in Wetzlar, Germany; I was ‘reborn’ in Jerusalem, Israel in 1985! For that, and for the ability and opportunity to study and translate Hebrew texts, I must acknowledge my thanks to the One Deity, and to Mr. & Mrs. Leon and Klara (nee Silberman) Hoch, OBM (of blessed memory), who raised me and sent me to Hebrew School and provided for my every need, and for Rabbi Mordechai Goldstein, OBM , Rosh Yeshiva (dean) of the Diaspora Yeshiva, Jerusalem, who took me in as a student, provided a room for me in the dormitory and my daily meals in the Yeshiva’s cafeteria and who encouraged me to labor over the pages of the Babylonian Talmud with the commentary of the Penei Yehoshua as a guide; we, I and my Ḥavruta (study partner) would sit and read the text out loud, day after day, to find something new (Ḥiddush – a ‘novel insight’), to offer a breakthrough in understanding while remaining faithful to the rulings of the Tannaim and Amoraim (the first and second generation of Torah sages after the destruction of the Second Temple). In those days, I’d rise at 4:30 am, walk into the Old City, along the dimly lit streets to the mikvah (ritual bath) – first shower, then the hot water mikvah and then on to the mikvah with the cold waters, dry off with those whitest of white towels, get dressed, walk back to the Yeshiva and to the Beit Midrash (House of Study), put on the tallit (prayer shawl) and tefillin (phylacteries), and join with others in ‘Shaḥarit,’ the morning prayer service.  The yeshiva observed the ancient custom of the ‘Ḥasidim’ (those who go beyond the letter of the law), who synchronized the moment of the recital of the prayer ‘Shma Yisroel’ (‘Listen Israel’) with sunrise.

How did I come to be in Jerusalem? At age 37, I had a once-in-a-lifetime dream. 
My mother, OBM, had passed that summer.  She appeared to me in my dream; she appeared and spoke from the shadows, unemotional, and said in Yiddish: ‘Geh a’heim, vehrt dir zein git’, (Return home; it’ll be good for you.). And that was it. The next morning, I asked myself, ‘Home? Where is home?’ St. Paul, Minnesota, where I grew up? Or Israel? Yes! ‘Next year in Jerusalem’ And so, after this remarkable dream, a video call from another world, I flew to the Holy Land (airplane), arriving in Jerusalem at night, and taken in as a guest by a family I had never met and only known to them as a friend of a friend! Asked what I wanted to do, I answered ‘I came to learn Torah’.  
So what is Torah?  This like asking what is Life? The simple answer: Torah is the Hebrew Bible, including the Books of the Hebrew Prophets, and the writings found in the Book of Psalms, the Book of Ruth, the Book of Esther, etc., etc.  And it is the Babylonian Talmud, and the Jerusalem Talmud, and the Kabbalah books like the Book Zohar and the Book Yeṣirah.  A general guide to learning Torah is to learn what you like, what you enjoy, so when you study Torah writings, you get inspired. You feel that what you are learning is helping you to understand and become wise in perceiving how the world works.   
AstroExegesis’s mission is to explore the night sky as a divine text that inspires and illuminates the space where Torah and Astrology meet.  Its mission is fueled by love of Torah and love of Astrology. 
As a Hebrew-literate research astrologer, my research is aimed at fully understanding the Jewish way of astrology as it developed from ancient times in the astrological statements of the Talmudic sages (200 – 500 CE), to late antiquity (500 – 1000 CE) in, for example, the Book Yeṣirah and its early commentaries by Saadia Gaon and Shabtai Donnolo; through to the Middle Ages (1000 – 1500 CE) when such great rabbis as Abraham Ibn Ezra, Yosef Gikatilla, Moshe ben Naḥman and other rabbis and kabbalists gave us their wonderful writings on the subject; and then in our Modern Era (1500 – Present), an era defined by constant innovation, from the invention of the printing press to the invention of wi-fi technology, an era that makes possible the worldwide dissemination of books and media that apply astrology to the project of understanding life and relationships and undo its ill repute as something that fortune tellers do to take money from the gullible and transforms it into a bona fide spiritual practice that has the power to renew faith in the One Deity and Its divine providence.

Moris Hoch is an independent researcher who focuses on the study and translation of Hebrew astrological texts. Moris is a certified astrologer, C. A., PAA-NCGR