Because I’m not good at these essay things—I tend to get distracted, and after a hard night of writing, I find it impossible to continue where I left off, leaving me with a quarter-written essay, which I can touch and retouch but can never actually conclude or somehow turn into something that people will want to read to discover what it says—I’ve decided to take the poor man’s route and turn this exercise into a transcription of a conversation on Judaism and Jewish conversion I had with my sister Randy. There are problems with transcriptions, and in particular me transcribing, viz., I don’t have much in the way of a memory. Most of what I remember usually happened over the last five minutes. With that said, I’ll admit right up front, much of the remembering will be fictionalized by me—being the writer and, in case you’ve forgotten, an arrogant S.O.B. (no offense, mom)—as the hero in each and every scene.

So we’re on the same page, I’ve studied Judaism, but I am in no way an expert or even someone who is terribly knowledgeable about it. I can’t quote the Mishnah or the Talmud, or tell you who begot Rachel (the biblical Rachel, not my beautiful niece, of whose parentage I’m fairly certain), or whether removing the stopper of an ancient water jug would be considered work prohibited on the Shabbot, the day of rest. There are many things I don’t know, so take everything I say (and the words I put into Randy and my mouth) with a large chunk of good old Kosher salt.

It’s raining outside, a light mist in an otherwise warm day, and I’m walking in the dark after a not terribly busy day at work. I take a vanpool across the lake each morning and evening, and walk about fifteen minutes between the Castle and the vanpool drop off. As usual, after I leave the van, I dial the Doolies (yes, we’re still—and probably always will be—in the silly name stage). I’ve long since grown bored of the scenery, and since few people walk in Seattle—not counting the dog walkers, whose strange habits and careful picking up of their dog’s poop intrigues me in a disturbing-to-admit way—there’s not much to look at but non-Castley houses, dark lawns, and lots of cars, most filled with people at the end of their dark and wet night commutes.

This is my first day back to work after the New Years’ vacation, and I’m chatting with the Doolies when my call waiting clicks. The number is Private, and after mumbling a goodbye, I switch over. It’s my sister Randy. She asks if I have time to chat, and I explain that since I’m walking home from the van, I have nothing but time.

“I read the essay Doolies wrote for the Rabbi,” Randy says. Both Doolies and I wrote an essay as part of the first assignment in our Jewish conversion class. I was born Jewish, and by Jewish laws and customs, I don’t need to convert. Even a non-practicing person born of a Jewish mother is considered Jewish, even if they (the person or their mother or their mother’s mother) practiced or believed in Catholicism or Voodoo or Witchcraft or atheism (this may not be technically true: I have read that a Jew can only push their beliefs so far before losing their Jewish-ness, but this is the basic understanding). Judaism is not something you do or believe, it’s something you’re born into.

Randy once dragged me to a rabbi she was studying with. She introduced me as the brother who asked many questions and believed in little. Unlike other religions, Judaism thrives on questioning, although, to be fair (to me), most of the questioning revolves around explanations of the Jewish laws, e.g., “rabbi, why do we not eat the fat of the pig, which, when cut in thin slices and wrapped around a piece of fish, makes even dry and flaky fish delicious?” The very first question the rabbi asked me—before I could get into the bacon-wrapped fish query—was, “Do you have to believe in God to be Jewish?” I thought for a moment before answering simply, “No.” The rabbi looked at my sister and said, “I thought you said he was contentious?”

Doolies was not born Jewish, and therefore needs to convert to pass on Jewish-ness to our children (Jewish-ness passes down through the mother), something that is very important to my family, and, as I thought more about it, surprising even myself, important to me.

Returning to the phone call, Randy continues, “and I wanted to talk about the last paragraph, the one where Doolies pointed out that Orthodox Judaism is sexist.” In case you didn’t get a chance to read the essays, the last question the rabbi asked us related to which type of Judaism we wanted to practice.

I need to provide a bit of background to explain the different flavors of Judaism before jumping into my answer. The first thing the uninitiated needs to understand is that unlike some religions (say, Catholicism), Judaism does not have a central authority, there is no pope, no ultimate, all-powerful rabbi or committee who makes decisions for the religion. There was a time before the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem (we Jews are nothing if not systematically oppressed—I have my theories about that as well, but I’ll save that for another essay) where there was such a body. There are now committees of rabbis who do opine on certain matters, and their opinions are codified and followed by their communities. These Rabbinical Assemblies (or Beit Dins) are further broken down into three major sects. There may be one or two others, but I’ve decided to talk about the Big Three because growing up these were the only ones I knew about.

You can think of Judaism as a spectrum, across which there are varying degrees of observance and belief in the laws of our ancestors. The strictest reading of these laws is, not surprisingly, done by the Orthodox Jews. They believe that God handed the laws (both the written Torah—otherwise known as the first five books of the Old Testament, and the oral tradition, which is Moses’ interpretations and explanations of the laws) to Moses and, to a lesser extent, the sages and prophets who followed Moses, and their Rabbinical Assemblies are very strict with the interpretation of these laws as they relate to the modern world. For example, an Orthodox Jew will not drive on the Shabbot (the day of rest, which starts on Friday night and ends on Saturday night) or eat non-Kosher food (e.g., the bacon-wrapped fish). Orthodox Jews refer to themselves as Observant Jews, in that there is no real difference between an Orthodox Jew and a Conservative or Reform Jew—i.e., if you’re born Jewish, you are a Jew. Period. There are only different levels of observing the Jewish laws.

This is a bit disingenuousness on the Orthodox Jew’s part: while if you’re born a Jew, they consider you Jewish, if you choose to become Jewish—i.e., a Jew by Choice (some Orthodox Jews do not believe in “conversion,” per se. They believe that a Jew by Choice was accidentally born not Jewish and is returning to their true nature), which is allowed (but not encouraged) by all flavors of Judaism—you are only considered a Jew at the level of your conversion. Hence, when Doolies converts with a conservative rabbi, the Orthodox Jews will not consider her Jewish, but the Conservative and Reform Jews will.

The middle ground for Judaism is the Conservative Jews. I was raised Conservative and therefore have the firmest understanding of their practice. Like the Orthodox Jews, the Conservative Jews believe in the laws of Moses, but they also believe that some of the laws need to be reinterpreted because society has changed an awful lot since the times of Moses. For example, while Orthodox Jews’ laws would never allow a woman rabbi to lead prayers, most Conservatives (with the congregation where I grew up an exception), allow woman Rabbis, and provide woman with the same opportunities as men in prayer. (The Orthodox Jews argue they do the same, and to some extent this is true. While any woman may pray and study like a man in an Orthodox temple, the Orthodox do not believe that parts of the prayer—and to a lesser extent, study—are mitzvahs for woman, i.e., commandments from God. To take an example, the Orthodox Jews do not allow woman to lead prayer service because, since time-based prayer is not a mitzvah for women, it would be insulting to the men to say that out of all the men in the temple who could fulfill the mitzvah, none of them were learned enough to lead the temple service, and only a woman, who is not commanded, was capable.)

I find that Conservative Jews tend to be less observant in other more meaningful ways. A good way to judge observance is to see when people attend services (group prayer) at temple. By way of example, when Doolies and I visited a Conservative temple in Orange County, during the Kiddush (food plays a big role in all Jewish activities, and the Kiddush follows the Saturday morning service with cake and wine), we sat at a table munching away on our late breakfast with another couple. The other couple pointed out—and this seemed defensive in nature, almost as if they needed to get this out before we could have a conversation with them—that they did not normally attend Shabbot services, but because their son was having his Bar Mitzvah (celebrating his 13th birthday and, by Jewish law, becoming a man—which, incidentally, goes completely against my monster theory, which states that children stay children until they turn 26 because of the mushy consistency of their brains) the following weekend, they decided to attend the services. For prayer and observance, most Conservative Jews attend services during the high holy days (three days every year) and for life events, with the only exception being the Conservative rabbis, who, it should be pointed out, usually live an Orthodox Jewish life in most respects.

And, finally, there is Reform Judaism. I know the least about the Reform movement because I was never exposed to it. From what I do understand, Reform Jews pick and chose the laws that makes sense to them, a smorgasbord of laws, if you will. As far as I understand, they do not believe that the Torah was the word of God. Therefore, the laws themselves lose authority, except for those that they choose to follow. (Again, my description may only be partially accurate. I have read about the movement but have no firsthand experience.)

With that out of the way, we return to my phone conversation. Ah, I mentally rub my hands, Randy wants to have a religious discussion. “Before we get started,” I start in, “Doolies’s comment was based mostly on my descriptions of some of the Orthodox laws related to woman, and how they seem awfully old-fashion and—and it was me that used this word first—sexist.” Although true, I did this to deflect the blame away from the Doolies. Doolies has been incredibly good about the conversion process. She has been doing lots of reading (while Doolies is a good student, she isn’t always the best reader, e.g., see how few of these paragraphs, outside of the sentences with her name in it, she will read—which, when I think about it, probably has more to do with what I’m writing and how I’m writing it than her desire to read), reaching out to rabbis, and attending Shabbot dinners and Orthodox and Conservative services, in other words, she’s being more Jewish (regrettably, only in the “observant” way and not in the being Jewish way—if only it were that easy) than me.

For me, one of the best part of Doolies’s conversion process, has been looking at Judaism through her eyes. It’s been refreshing and reinvigorating to my study of Judaism. If there is such a thing as fate—and if there were, I still wouldn’t believe in it—you could argue that but for Doolies’s conversion, I would not have begun exploring my religion. For example, if I had a married a Conservative Jewish woman, I would have continued on my ignorant way, not learning more about my religion, but instead arguing as I always do against it, in my semi-intellectual and -knowledgeable way, which is, by far, the most dangerous type of arguing since it is not about the pursuit of truth but about the act of arguing, and to argue effectively (at least at a superficial level), I need very little in the way of knowledge or understanding.

“Some of the Jewish laws relating to women are quite beautiful,” Randy says. By this time I’m walking down the hill that leads to Wilson avenue. This is a tricky hill as the ground is wet and it is steep enough for the city to lean a construction sign warning “Snow Route Do Not Enter” against the Stop Sign, ready to be deployed in the rare Snow Event in Seattle. There is also some over-brush, which I have to duck and maneuver my head around, which is difficult because the rain hood obscures my vision and the brush blocks the light so I end up running into low-hanging branches, some of which have dangerously curved spikes.

“Beautiful but sexist,” I say. “Just look at the laws involving covering the body, or the that-time-of-the-month laws, or the not going to temple laws, or the separation of men and woman at temple laws, or the having children, lots and lots of children, laws. Where do you want to start with defending these laws and showing how they’re not sexist?”

“The laws are beautiful,” she says, “but only when you understand them. Do you know why Orthodox men are not allowed to touch women?” This was one of the laws that Doolies learned when she met an Orthodox rabbi during a Jewish class in the OC. Before the class, her friend—a Jewish coworker who has been helping Doolies experience the California version of Judaism—warned her that the rabbi would not shake the hand of any woman at the class. When Doolies asked me why, I explained:

“Cooties.”

“Close, but not exactly,” Randy says. “Orthodox men do not touch woman other than their wives out of respect for those other women.”

“Respect in that the women are protected from the groping hands of the lecherous Orthodox men? Do you see how the Jewish religion has no respect for women? It thinks that if an Orthodox man touched another women, he would—or is it that she would?—be unable to resist her charms, analogous to how rape is the ‘woman’s fault.’”

“Let me finish before you judge,” Randy says, warming up to the debate. “For two weeks of each month, a married woman may not be intimate with her husband.”

“Ah, this one I know is about cooties and how unclean the woman is during her period.”

“No, again, you’re not seeing the beauty. It’s not about being unclean, it’s about increasing of the sexual desire of the married couple.”

The hill is steep and I end up walking much faster than I realize until at the bottom, the sidewalk widens into a semicircle, which provides a runway to work off the extra speed and complete the turn. Wilson avenue is busier, and after turning, I switch the phone to my outside ear to protect it from the cars zooming by and the wind blowing over the lake and up the hill.

“When you don’t see Doolies for a few weeks, how do you feel when you see her again?”

I don’t answer because it’s a trap. I see where she’s heading, and it’s nowhere good. She wants me to admit that desire is increased by absence, and, hence the Jewish law makes sense, and everything is right with the world. In situations like this, I find it’s better not to answer, to change the subject or, in this case, to pretend bad cell phone coverage.

“You feel more . . . attracted to her, don’t you?” Randy prompts me. “It’s the same way with the Jewish two-week waiting period. By not touching each other for two weeks out of every month, the couple enjoys heightened desire for each other. You’re probably now going to ask what this has to do with a man not touching another woman.”

“You seem to be doing great without me,” I say as I dodge a pack of female joggers, who I don’t touch, but I do covet in that spandex-covered way.

“During the two-week period, the woman is not allowed to touch any man. Another beautiful aspect of this law is privacy. It is considered rude for someone outside of the marriage to inquire about the woman’s time of the month. Because a man doesn’t know, and can’t ask, when a woman is in her two-week cycle, he assumes that she is always in her cycle, and therefore he may never touch any woman but his wife or members of his family. This is to protect women from having to either disclose the timing of their cycle, or disobey the Jewish law.”

“Before you go any further,” I say, “take a step back and realize who is making these laws. While they may appear beautiful to you—and for now I won’t argue their intrinsic beauty—understand that this was not a cabal of Jewish woman sitting around deciding what was best for woman. Instead, this law—as well as all Jewish law—was written by men, interpreted by men, and enforced by men, men, I should add, who were mostly older and had a thing for long scraggily gray beards, not to mention funny black hats. I’m not one to judge a person by his facial hair or taste in fedoras, but there you have it.

“What happened to it being God’s law?” she asks.

“Don’t get me started on this line, or we’ll never move beyond this. Suffice to say—and this is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg—reading the Torah, it becomes apparent (at least to me) that it was written by more than one author. To think that Moses transcribed the words of God, and that God chose to use different voices, tenses, tones, and, more particularly, styles in a single work boggles my mind.”

“And now you’re quoting Julius Wellhausen,” she says. “That’s not very original, and, furthermore, has been disproven many times over the years. There are reasons the Five Books of Moses may sound disjointed, and it does not have to be because they were written by different authors. We cannot understand all of God’s plans.”

“Be that as it may,” I continue, “Moses also seemed quite skilled with writing about his own death—more so than most narrators I know. The bible has so many wasted opportunities to prove or at least supply additional evidence, even outside of faith, for the honesty and authorship of the Jewish works. Just drop a few lines of Einstein’s relativity theory or Darwin’s natural selection theory, or anything that man discovered after ancient times.

“But let’s stay in the realm of provable and good,” I continue, “as in these laws are good for a good reason, and not because God said they were good. I imagine a cranky group of old men dressed in black sitting in a small room and deciding what is best for woman. Even if we assume that God wrote the Torah, it has been interpreted by rabbis, and by rabbis, I’m again speaking of old male rabbis. Why weren’t woman involved in this?”

“Women are inherently closer to God,” Randy says, “and don’t necessarily need the study and prayer that men do to understand God.”

“Hogwash. That is a man’s excuse for excluding women from important religious decisions, and keeping them barefoot and pregnant. But let’s move on. Let’s continue with the inherent goodness of these laws. What about the modesty laws? Why must Orthodox Jewish women cover themselves from their heads to their toes?”

“They don’t cover themselves from head to toe. Their face shows, and sometimes their lower legs, at least for the younger women.”

“We’ll get back to that after you set the groundwork,” I say, enjoying the opportunity to set her up for a later knock down.

“Fine. Woman cover their body out of modesty, and—and the idea here is similar to the prohibition on sexual relations during the two-week cycle—this rule again increases the sexual desire of the couple. Everything that you keep hidden makes it that much more exciting and special when it’s finally revealed. When you see bathing suit-clad woman, are you even attracted to them anymore? There’s nothing hidden.”

“I can assure you that I am.”

“Anyway, the hiding is what makes it appealing. Think how much more appealing a woman is when you don’t see flesh all day every day.”

The cars’ lights on Wilson avenue reflect the increasingly diagonal rain. I cover the phone with more of my fingers. Only a few houses away from the Castle, I quicken my pace, and turn toward my house. I avoid stepping on the wooden slabs of my oversized stairs, where the rain has mixed with healthy algae to create a perfect slippery surface. I juggle the phone and my bag to grab the mail from the mailbox and shake myself dry after opening the door. The alarm beeps and I jab at the buttons with my wet fingers.

“. . . more to it but we need to understand it at a lower level,” Randy says after I manage to get the phone back to my ear. I make noises about calling her back from my home phone, knowing that cellular reception in the Castle is terrible at its best. I peel off my rain shell and grab the phone to continue our conversation.

“What is Judaism about?” Randy starts in. “What does it mean to be Jewish?”

“We know its not all about believing in God,” I respond. “Maybe it’s obeying God’s laws?”

“But why? If we believe God is all-powerful, then why do we need to follow God’s laws? God doesn’t exactly need us to do anything, does he?”

“Very good question,” I say. “If he really is omnipotent, then God shouldn’t need our obedience. He can change the world anyway he desires.”

“Bingo. It’s not about God, it’s about us. God gave us his laws because he wants to help us. Besides creation, the laws are the greatest gift he could give us. He’s letting us share in his creation. He wants us to create ourselves as better people. He gave us the blueprint for creation, and wants us to improve ourselves.”

“And that’s what the laws are? A path to self-improvement?” I sense the trap, but I can’t see where she’s heading with this argument.

“Think about it this way, we were talking about how women are on a different level than men. If you look at the order of creation, God went from the least advanced to most advanced, and ended at women. That should give you an idea of what the Jewish people think about women.”

“I’m not sure if being created from the rib bone of man translates into more advanced,” I say, providing the rote counter to her statement.

“Let me explain it differently. You mentioned before that God’s law requires women to have lots of babies. That’s not exactly true. God only commanded men to be fruitful and multiply. It’s not a mitzvah for women to have babies.”

“But women do all the work!” I complain, feeling like a man who tries to defends women, but finds he cannot because, well, he’s not a woman, and everything he says appears self serving in one way or the other.

“Ah, and here we have it.” I can hear the smile in her voice. I sense the anvil approaching, and like the coyote at the bottom of the valley, I know I was the one who set the anvil teetering. “The Jewish laws are about self-improvement, and women do not need for childbirth to be a mitzvah. We have a closer connection to children and a desire to have children that men do not share. God doesn’t need to command us to want children because we inherently do. Men, on the other hand, would rather sit around all day watching television and not have children, if it was completely up to men. God’s laws are designed to complete and improve us. Having children is an important part of the growth of men and women. And without the commandment, men might miss out on it, on the joys and learning that come from children.”

I sit on the green couch to give her words a moment to set. The purpose of Judaism is self improvement? I had not thought about this angle and it sets me spinning.

“I’ll tell you what,” Randy says. “I’ll send Doolies a good book on the role of women in Orthodox Judaism. I think she’ll like it. It explains things much better than I can.

“I think she’d like that.”

“Judaism is a very beautiful religion, with wonderful laws that mostly make sense once you delve deep enough into them. I don’t pretend to understand all of them, but some do make sense. I’ll mail the book to Doolies and then we can all talk about it.

Like most journeys, I find that the quest for religion isn’t always epic. It’s usually tiny and repetitive, like my walk from the van to the Castle; it consists of small journeys of understandings, which pile up and sometimes manage to put a spotlight on truth. The Jewish people describe themselves as a people who always question. Judaism does not duck away from the harder questions by demanding rote answers. Every day in a religious person’s life is a day of questioning and thinking about larger meaning. I am trying to do this (the questioning and thinking, not as of yet much religious living). I try not to respond and belittle Judaism automatically. I still argue with some of its tenets and try to better understand it, but I consciously try not to come from a place where it’s my job to prove what’s wrong. Instead, I find myself trying to show what’s right. For both Doolies and me, this is an important beginning on a quest that I hope will take us through our lives together.