\n

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\u00a0about\u00a0the\u00a0vegetarian way.<\/span><\/p>\n

So, what I said was this: \u00a0“It turns out that–without trying, without any intention, without wanting to–I guess I’m\u00a0practicing the highest form of Kashrut by eating a vegetarian diet.”<\/span><\/p>\n

To his credit, the rabbi responded with a hearty guffaw.<\/span><\/p>\n

“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.<\/span><\/p>\n

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. \u00a0I do suppose, I guess, that you could say that by eating vegetarian I am, in fact, embodying some values of the Jewish variety.”<\/span><\/p>\n

“You definitely could say that,” said the rabbi.<\/span><\/p>\n

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.<\/span><\/p>\n

“So,” he said. “Since you’re Jewish, and since you’re already\u00a0practicing 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?”<\/span><\/p>\n

Oy.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Although the worship [what does that mean, anyway?] service was long, the bar mitzvah boy did himself proud, and this here atheist survived another<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":26485,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[994,1997,476],"tags":[1333,2108,665,2107],"yoast_head":"\n