Today is a Friday..the day to get ready for Shabbos. I made a beautiful Pareve chicken potpie. In case you don't know, this means I did not use cream and butter to make a white sauce for the potpie (no mixing dairy and meat together) I used non-dairy creamer and margarine to make a roux, or rather a faux roux . It nearly killed me. I can't even pronounce the chemicals in the non-dairy creamer, which leads me to think about the wisdom of  this whole thing. Anyway, the roux morphed into a white sauce, veggies were cooked and the turkey diced. Add faux roux and  a ready made pie crust ... VOILA! It looks good.


The wisdom of converting: My beloved is thinking about converting to Judaism. At first I was touched and overjoyed Seems to me that joining The Club has been highly over rated. There is a higher standard of behavior for a convert than one who has the Blessing or Curse to be born Jewish.  (To quote Monk "It's a blessing AND a curse") I know that every one of the people on the Bima (the pulpit area) has their car keys in their pockets, ready to drive home after services. For you non-Jew's this is a big no-no in the Orthodox world. See, you are not supposed to "work" on the Sabbath.... which has tumbled into a myriad of "no-no" activities. Now if Dave was to be Club Member he would have to make the promise not to drive. Actually, he would be promising to observe all of the no- no activities.  Here is a partial list of "no-no's": driving, cooking, using the phone, sewing, watching TV, using the computer, using the Ipod ...  
Plus the added commandments of keeping Kosher, saying the daily prayer's and  a spiderweb of minutia, all designed to enhance our spirituality.  <sigh> It is overwhelming. It is unwieldy. One can lose there very heart in this maze. 


Now let's overlay all of the above with the community  standards. The Community Standards. Are you desiring to belong to the Modern Orthodox, Zionist's? Black Hatter's  (sort of Alice In Wonderland), crochet kippah's, black kippah's..... and this list does not include all the flavors of Judaism not associated with Orthodoxy.


There are times I want to be Jewish  hermit. I am told there is no such thing. So, tonight I will go, have a tribal meeting and  continue to carve out that path.