I thought to myself the other day, “Well, I’m not religious.” And then I said to myself, “Oh, but you are.” For the first time in my life, I am choosing to attend a religious service ever week. I am choosing to pray, to join others in prayer, to learn to stories of the Torah and the laws of the Talmud, to debate which laws I’ll follow and which I won’t.
Last night in improv, I did a scene that was really funny at the end. It started as a typical “morning after.” Putting on the borrowed robe and checking in on how my scene partner was feeling. I offered to make him tea (we had to make drinks in every scene, but weren’t allowed to offer a can of soda from the magical fridge.) As I puttered around, he kept asking for a few more things–toast, butter on the toast, milk for the tea, and then ham and cheese for the buttered toast. I freaked out because he wasn’t keeping kosher, even though in the scene we had been involved in a little bondage the night before and his character wasn’t quite divorced yet. He starts yelling about ancient laws and I start yelling about how he should have told me earlier he didn’t keep a kosher kitchen.
We had everyone cracking up and it was hard to keep a straight face during the scene. My scene partner is jewish and we’d actually had the kosher conversation once before, so some of things he was saying is just what he says about kosher anyway. And while I don’t keep a kosher kitchen and don’t plan on it, I do keep more kosher than most jews I’m friends with.
It comes up a little less frequently now than it did in January. It seems in January, everthing I read or talked about was jewish related. I was reading 3 books at a time and absorbing as much information as possible. Now my rabbi is back and I’m ready to take a slower, more thoughtful approach to my new religion and community. I’ve gulped the water at the end of the race, now it is time to stay hydrated with new information, new understandings, and a new language.
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