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No? Okay then.
As I walked across the bridge, I saw a man in a long black coat, a beard, and a yarmulke, holding a palm frond and trying rather unsuccessfully to hide behind a lamppost. He could have been waiting for a bus, but it was a pedestrian bridge. He could have been waiting for someone, but it seemed an odd place to wait. I stared at him for a while and wondered. As I passed, he called out to me.
"Are you Jewish?"
"What?"
"Are you Jewish?"
"No."
"Oh. Alright then. Have a nice day."
That's the second time that's happened to me. It makes me wonder what they're doing. I guess they're trying to round up Jewish students and make sure they're going to synagogue and not wandering away from the community. Or maybe they're inviting people to the Sukkot tent on the Diag. Sometimes I'm tempted to say yes, just to see what they're after. Sometimes I wonder if they would wish me a good day even if I said yes.
They're my favorite religious group on campus because they don't try to give me anything or tell me I'm going to Hell or convince me that their way is right. They're just checkin'.
srah - Thursday, 16 October 2003 - 1:05 PM
Tags: philosophy & religion, university of michigan
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Comments (5)
tbone - October 16, 2003 - 9:33 PM - ℓ
That's strange. I saw that guy too but he didn't ask me if I was Jewish. Maybe I don't look Jewish...Maybe I was really trying desperately to avoid any conversation with anyone that day.
tbone - October 16, 2003 - 9:35 PM - ℓ
How do they know who is Jewish or not? I mean, you can't look Jewish? Were they asking everybody?
katie - October 17, 2003 - 8:26 AM - ℓ
I'm always amused/annoyed by Christian sects that claim people are going to Hell. I, as any other Eastern Orthodox Christian could, can tell you that there's no way for us alive people to know positively what happens after death. And who are WE to make that judgement anyway?
I get 'are you Jewish' a lot. Usually right after I say that I'm Orthodox. When I answer no, the next question is 'are you Catholic', to which the answer is also no.
There are various Orthodox and/or Hasidic Jewish groups that send people out to try to reel in secular Jewish students. Some of these groups even promise free trips to Israel to get their targets back in touch with Judaism as a religion. Given the astronomical rates of intermarriage between Jews and non-Jews, and the fact that very few children of these relationships are raised as Jews at all, the recruiting groups are probably correct in figuring that college (where said hookups might start) is their last chance to draw these people back in.
As for me, I personally liked the guy from the weird Christian sect that stood in the middle of the Virginia Tech Drillfield, waved a flag and told us higher education was a tool of Satan. But I think he might have done better if he'd stationed himself on the path coming from the math building, where students coming out tended to be angry/upset/confused, instead of the path leading from the English building, where we were just bored.