Adventures in Judaism

You know, I've begun to think that it's very difficult to be a Jew in this culture (I could probably just stop there) without getting a bit of a chip on your shoulder (there, too) about holidays (oh, so that's  what this is about). One the one hand, there's the fact that Jews have easily five times as many religious holidays as Christians do, in addition to being "allowed" to celebrate any American holidays that can be considered "secular" either in origin or in current observance. You can measure your passage through a year in a manner that comes pretty close to "what holiday are we preparing for or celebrating this  week?" It's a lot for a new Jew to learn, and I feel like I haven't gotten any holiday but Chanukkah "right" yet. Just this weekend, we have our kids each a small gift for Purim, partly in lieu of the "Easter bunny" gifts they would have gotten this time of year, but partly because we heard somewher

A conversation I had with some students this evening has been bugging me tonight, kind of in the way that you find yourself coming up with snappier comebacks or wittier comments than the ones you actually said, hours or even days after they no longer matter. But in this case, it wasn't an insult I wanted a comeback to or a conversation I wanted to sound a bit wittier in, but a terribly vital, deceptively simple question: why? I had overheard a conversation about problems of a religious sort between a couple of students who had dropped in for anatomy tutoring this evening, but when I offhandedly asked what was up they told me it was "church problems," in a tone of voice that seemed to say "you're Jewish, you wouldn't understand." Wanting to feel a little more relevant, I admitted to having tried to be a Christian minister once, prior to   choosing  Judaism. This decision seemed to puzzle them. They wanted to know why I would do such a thing.  Why become J

It's been a while since I've written a blog post. Partly, that's because it's been a while since I've felt I had anything to write about. Lately, being Jewish just hasn't been a central focus of my attention: no holidays being celebrated this month, no new religious practices being integrated into my life, in short: no news. Either that means I'm doing something wrong, or it means I'm doing something very right in letting Judaism become part of the background hum of my life: the new normal, as it were. You see, more so than any other religion I have been part of, Judaism isn't something you do once or twice a week and besides that maybe ponder once in a while. No, Judaism stakes a claim on every moment of your life in one way or another. In a way, Judaism is less something you do and more something you are . Something you become . The wonder of that is that over time you get so used to it that all of those religious practices that once required gr