Later, at the bar mitzvah party–I sidled up to said rabbi for a chat–although my motivations may not have been all that pure. I was sincere in wanting to tell him that I had learned something from his sermon. That was the suckup part of the conversation. I did, in fact, learn that intriguing tidbit about the vegetarian way.

So, what I said was this:  “It turns out that–without trying, without any intention, without wanting to–I guess I’m practicing the highest form of Kashrut by eating a vegetarian diet.”

To his credit, the rabbi responded with a hearty guffaw.

“Well, are you Jewish?” he asked. They always ask me that. I don’t look Jewish to most people–even though there are a lot of Jews of Lithuanian background who are blonde[ish] and blue-eyed like me.

Well, yes,” I replied. I don’t remember if I mentioned to him that I’m an atheist. “I was born into a Jewish family. But I didn’t start eating vegetarian because I’m Jewish. I started for a lot of reasons, but none of them was the fact that I’m Jewish.  I do suppose, I guess, that you could say that by eating vegetarian I am, in fact, embodying some values of the Jewish variety.”

“You definitely could say that,” said the rabbi.

And then he did the thing–the thing that I imagine a lot of clergy people do, because they just can’t help themselves, or maybe because they’re paid to do it: He couldn’t just leave our conversation where it was. He just had to turn a perfectly innocent conversation into a sales pitch.

“So,” he said. “Since you’re Jewish, and since you’re already practicing a highly evolved form of Kashrut…why not add the rest of the Jewish components and enhance the experience? Why not join the congregation and come to synagogue more often?”

Oy.