Torahfied

A couple of days ago my friend, Amy, sent me a funny email with the subject line "Wonderful New Jewish Words." Pretty funny stuff. The second entry is:

Torahfied (n.) Inability to remember one's lines when called to read from the Torah at one's Bar or Bat Mitzvah (or from the Hagadah at Passover).

While I'm not about to celebrate my Bar Mitzvah, I can identify with the terror that washes over a person when they are called to make a public profession of spirituality... assuming personal responsibility for commitment to live into the traditions, customs, and practices of faith. This is where I should stop and offer a disclaimer: this is not my first time around the block of faith-wrestling; I have struggled with religion for most of my life... not the methods or philosophy, but rather, which methods and which philosophy. I guess this is the part of the baggage that comes with being a preacher's kid. Yep, I'm one of that particularly problematic breed of trouble-makers that was raised to shut-up and do what he was told (and believe what he was told), but has spent a lifetime doing nothing but asking questions and blazing a new set of trails. 

So, I was told recently (by a rabbi, of course) that questions are good; that questions, in fact, are the very heart of spiritual practice. Knowing about the Jewish tolerance - nay, celebration! - of opinionatedness, I was still, nevertheless, surprised to hear such encouragement from the mouth of a respected religious leader. It's not, after all, the reception that I had received growing up.

And now, here I am... sitting on the edge of a cliff, my legs dangling over, teasing the chasm of unfamiliarity. I started out just wanting to brush up on my Hebrew so grad school won't be such a headache (that's a discussion for another time). But, just a few short weeks into my experience since I visited my first ever Shabbat service at a local synagogue and I am already having to fight back the urge to throw myself completely into the whirlwind called conversion. The services are in Hebrew, the prayerbook is unfathomable, I can't get the kippa to stay on my head without sliding off, and I feel like everyone - E-VER-Y-ONE - is looking at me stumble my way through the prayers thinking to themselves "...get a load of this poser." Wow. Torahfied is right.

Maybe you'll want to follow along on my little journey into the world of Judaism. I'm not exactly sure about the destination. But I can guarantee it'll be interesting (if not a bit humiliating for me) to watch me flail about in this alien-but-strangely-familiar landscape.