The dirty orange skyline was thick of the passing clouds that covered our streets with snow. I left early for the weekly appointment and enjoyed the more relaxed drive because of it. When I reached the synagogue only a couple of cars were parked before me.

The inside was warm, the usual stained glass windows reflecting light back into the sanctuary and the wooden separator to the back partially closed. In the door sized opening, the rabbi motioned and said that we’d meet downstairs.

Along the way I bumped into a friend and said hello. We exchanged some small talk then separated paths. In the far end of the basement was a classroom where we had convened a few times before. That’s where the rabbi confronted me. Sometimes I can’t tell if he is kidding or is serious. This was one of those occasions. “No, I’m not an exotic dancer”, I chuckled in reply.

I changed my Facebook status by decorating my past with strange occupations – circus animal trainer and Chippendale dancer. Truth is, I dance around life all the time, miss-stepping more often than not. There are plenty of monkeys surrounding me and trying to get them to expand their horizons is an animal act of its own… and that’s where I enter the actual purpose of this post.

Very few people read my blog. I don’t advertise it to the geocaching community anymore because many of the posts don’t apply. I don’t direct people to it because most of my friends and acquaintances would find some bones to pick, though their intentions are only good.

Blogging is a sort of self indulgence. It’s an epitaph as well. If hosted on a permanent site that’s hosted by Google, it lasts long after we die. If hosted on a privately financed site, it quickly erodes into the underwebs and is forgotten. I wonder and doubt that anything I have to say can truly add to the world. Can my posts enlighten others? Can they help? Sure they can, but do they? There are certainly better bloggers out there. There’s better material from lesser bloggers, too.

A side effect of incorporating the Jewish culture in my life has been a stronger conviction. I hear of Jewish guilt all the time, it’s both a joke and a melodrama. I came into this with enough guilt of my own and I keep it dripping intravenously. I’m not feeling any more guilt than I had before – but I do sense more conviction. Any work I do should be made available to help someone, and the more available, the better. The developments I put forth for business are made very available for the other members of my team, and eventually that work is made readily available for our company’s clients.

I didn’t think much of this dust-collecting blog until the rabbi mentioned it in our talk. He thought one of the posts had good merit, which made me rethink the whole purpose. To make a blog useful, it has to become centralized and separate. If I were to break my blog up into multiple blogs, it would make it more keyed to the readers’ interest and easier for that reader to glean useful information to help them along their journey. Just something for me to ruminate over.

The pain in her arm had been so acute that the nights went by in ebbs and tides. She would wake up with a moan, then settle back into a shallow sleep. Eventually she would roll to her side or move in some other way that triggered a sharp signal in her elbow and the cycle would start again.

Part of Judaism is a spirit of importance for life, so to spend my day off work to take care of my wife and kids is well justified, though I admittedly would have liked to see what Simchat Torah was like. I imagine happy people spinning around and dancing like king David then sitting down and chanting prayers for half an hour while the Torah is ceremoniously rolled back and the Rabbi imparts some wise anecdote.

Like the new year and like Yom Kippur, Simchat Torah is a gap between space and time. It marks the end of one cycle in life and the near immediate beginning of another. I heard tell that there are four new years in Judaism, though I anticipate that there are more. One is the Jewish new year for counting the year and making resolutions at Rosh Hashanah. Another is the Biblical year, Simchat Torah. I suppose that Yom Kippur would be the new year for our spiritual achievements – like a birthday of sorts. I recall one being a new year for the trees, Tu B’Shevat. Then there’s the calendar year right before Pesach where Nissan is the first month, exactly six months before Rosh Hashanah in Tishri.

In the same way that a sphere has no beginning or end, time only cycles and waypoints are added for our benefit. Each beginning and each closure is put in place by G-d (Genesis 1:14) for our benefit. Even moreso, each day begins in darkness (whether you go by the Jewish day or not) and blossoms into light. We can learn from the natural world around us and start anew each day, casting off, or at least weakening the stronghold, of the regrets from the day before and take on new opportunities to do good… to be a better representative of G-d.

So as I spend my days taking care of kids… Sometimes losing my patience… Sometimes being very patient… I can look on this new day as an opportunity to improve upon the past and be a better man than before and rejoice in The Laws that direct me to be so… Every day is Simchat Torah (lit. Rejoicing G-d’s commandments).

It was ghastly cold. Spirited fog pulled and twisted from the streets like taffy. It gyrated and spun pirouettes as the van cut through. When the van arrived, the parking lot was empty save one other car.

I adjusted and pinned the knitted kippah on my head and listened to the radio show come to its close before stepping into the season’s first freezing air. By that time there were a few more cars, but the lot still looked desolate.

As the doors of the synagogue opened, its warm, yellow light cut the darkness. People wandered around, talking and enjoying each others’ company. “I have an engagement tomorrow, so I came tonight,” I said to Rabbi Glazer. He joking replied that in doing so he had no need to come tomorrow. The comment wedged itself into my mind. Telling others my plans can be a type of arrogance. It’s almost like saying that I have special importance. Giving excuses is like that – it diminishes the importance other people’s time and possessions.

The evening service was unusually short compared to what I’m used to. Near the end of the service the Rabbi pulled out a paper with a list of questions that a local class had asked for him to answer in person. He went over these questions with us as a precursor to his class visit. One of the questions he directed at me: “In terms of size, Judaism is not a major world religion. From your perspective, what is something that may deter people from becoming Jewish?”. I mentioned how people treat you differently. They pick on you more. They throw you aside. They throw tasteless stereotypes at you as if they were accusations. The Rabbi mentioned that there is a kernel of truth in these stereotypes, to which I agreed and added that they misrepresent the intent. Any person might withhold money, not giving more than necessary, when saving for their children’s college. Any person might jump in to a conversation and give his opinion or advice regardless of religious belief… But if that person is found out to be a Jew, these characteristics are called stingy and obstinate.

A short time later a dialog was opened where the Rabbi posed the question: outside of being born from a Jewish mother, what makes one a Jew? He went off topic slightly to explain the range of Judaism. According to him… On one side there are people who focus primarily on scriptural tradition and base their ethics accordingly. These are the orthodox. On the other side you have people who focus on personal interpretations of scripture to identify their ethics. These are the reform. The conservative types fit in the middle, trying to balance the two.

He then went back to the main question, but threw in a wrench. Just recently a boy in the congregation was bar mitzvah’d. This boy doesn’t believe in God. His mother is Jewish… His father was the man I spoke with after Yom Kippur service, sitting alone at a table. He proposed that the boy didn’t stop being Jewish when he stopped believing in God. It surprised me to hear the rabbi say that believing in God doesn’t disqualify someone from being a Jew. I disagree, but held my tongue to see where he was going to take this. He eventually stated that it is “change” that makes a Jew decidedly Jewish. Jews strive to change the world and prepare it for the Messiah… whether they believe in Him or not.

I disagree. Outside of being born Jewish, God has everything to do with Judaism. Even more than a kosher diet, or being able to read Hebrew, it is putting God in the center of your life that makes one part of that family… And that’s true for Christians, too. Even Jesus told people to go to God, to repent and rebuild a life centered around God and His word. Praying to Jesus or to the Holy Spirit is essentially man-made observances from churches that claim to be Christian. In reality, praying to anyone other than God isn’t in scripture other than being called idolatry.

Nevertheless the Rabbi poses an interesting question. What makes a Jew different from the rest of the world?