real-shul-stories

[real-shul-stories]

Call from a young woman whose first question was, “Are you Hebrew?”. I asked if she meant “Am I Jewish?” and she repeated her question. I asked who was asking. She told me she was interested in converting to Hebrew. I was like “You’re interested in converting to Judaism…” and she went on like “Yes, I’ve been going through a lot and I want to be closer to the lord.” She told me she has a Hebrew friend and at this point I gently pointed out that “Jewish people” is what we call ourselves, not Hebrews.

[real-shul-stories]

Call from one of our members, who sounded very unnerved. “There’s a young man standing on the stairs near the parking lot with a coke can. He’s got short brown hair, and a mustache and beard…”

I responded, “Is he wearing a black puffy jacket?” and she said “Yes, actually… how did you know?” I sighed to myself before answering, “That’s just our security guard, ma’am.”

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Non-Jewish caller asked, “Is it well-understood in Judaism that Hanukkah ties in to the book of Daniel?” I was like “what” and he explained that the book of Daniel (which predates Hanukkah) mentioned the temple being desecrated and rededicated, paralleling what happens in the Hanukkah story later. He wanted to know if we believed Daniel predicted Hanukkah. I told him we don’t.

Internally I wondered why he’s thinking about Hanukkah in May

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Caller asked to speak with the rabbi. Coworker answered that the rabbi wasn’t available, then asked if the caller would tell her where he was calling from – he said the USA. He asked again if the rabbi was available (referring to the rabbi as a He, indicating he doesn't know our rabbis are women). Coworker told this person the rabbi was not available and asked to take a message. Caller then asked if coworker was a member here or just worked here. Coworker told him she just works here. He said “I wanted to ask you a question, but if you just work here, you probably don’t know. Have a blessed day.” Then he hung up.

[real-shul-stories]

misandrist lesbian seeks community

Got a call from someone who sounded very uncertain. She finally managed to ask if we had female rabbis. When I said yes, she asked, “Do they believe Yahweh is the messiah?”

Taken aback by this I said “No, but… Yahweh is the scholarly name for God, maybe you’re thinking of Yeshua?” She replied that Yahweh has many definitions, and then said “Yahweh is Jesus, right?” I tried to correct her again to no avail.

Despite my best efforts, the call continued for 42 minutes.

She explained that she became curious about Judaism because she had fallen in love with a Jewish woman who was a therapist. The therapist suggested she read Judaism for Dummies as a crash course, but the caller had trouble understanding it and increasingly felt like she “wasn’t supposed to be there.” She told me she’d been reading the bible and got upset at Leviticus because she’s a gay woman. When she voiced this to her therapist, the therapist responded “there are other books,” but didn’t explain. When I tried to tell her that she probably meant “there are other readings of that text,” the caller told me that Christians had told her that the word of the bible was meant to be taken literally and she shouldn’t try to make it work for her. When I told her Judaism has many interpretations of the laws, she said that there may be many different translations or interpretations, but it meant there wasn’t one singular truth.

She went on to tell me that she got discouraged from attending a universalist church. While in line at the food bank, someone there asked her a personal question that made her uncomfortable: “Do you know Jesus?”. She told me something about Jesus doesn’t resonate with her. How could somebody walk on water? It seemed false to her, like just a story. She told me she belives she “should have been” Jewish. “You people don’t surrender to god, you wrestle.” 

She went on a very long tangent after telling me she’d decided to convert. She told me she’d previously been involved with a unitarian church, but still felt disconnected after volunteering there regularly. She mentioned that she felt close with a female minister at the church (who was married to a man); this minister was always kind to her and encouraged her to play guitar at services. Later this minister resigned from the church, and though she assured the caller that it wasn’t her fault, the caller thinks it was because the minister stuck up for her. The way she talked about this minister gave me the sense that she’d had, if not romantic feelings, then a very parasocial relationship.

She then returned to talking about her therapist and admitted to having had a crush on her. She told me she wasn’t allowed to talk to her therapist anymore - that after she’d admitted her romantic feelings, her therapist had told her they couldn’t work together anymore because she “doesn’t want to hurt her clients.” The caller told me that her therapist felt strongly about not getting into relationships with clients, but that she felt even more strongly that she was in love. The caller has been counting down the days until she will be allowed to speak with this therapist again, an admission which makes me think the therapist may have gotten a restraining order. 

In addition to liking women, she apparently hates men - to the point of making “perfectly clear that I don’t like men to as many people as possible.” She has apparently been kicked out of three different churches because of this. The one time previously that she tried to speak to a rabbi, it was a man, and she told him she “doesn’t allow men in her personal life” and that they could not be friends because she hates men, but she still wanted him to tell her about Judaism. However, the male rabbi would not agree with her hypothesis that “god hates women” and she felt that he belittled her. She wants to speak to a female rabbi to get a non-male perspective, but my suspicion is that she wants confirmation of her bias that “god hates women” and thinks only another woman would be able to understand her reasoning.

At about the 30 minute mark she finally apologized for taking up my time, and asked to confirm where in the city we were. When I mentioned we were in a different part of the city than she’d thought, she realized she must have called the wrong synagogue - but continued talking for another 12 minutes before I finally managed to steer the call to a conclusion (i had stopped taking notes at this point).

The overall impression I got was that this woman has some trouble with boundaries, and easily confuses other women’s friendliness or willingness to listen for romantic interest. I also wonder whether organized religion in general is the right fit for her given existing biases and unwillingness to hear other interpretations. If she calls again I'll try to suggest some secular avenues for spending her time, but really I worry for any community she may try to join, as her disregard for boundaries seems like a persistent problem and she showed no real self awareness for it.

[real-shul-stories]

Call from someone living in the neighborhood who is moving out of the country. She used to be a backyard beekeeper and has about 3 gallons of raw honey she was hoping to find somewhere to donate. It was apparently all in a single foodsafe bucket rather than individual jars. I told her we couldn't accept it for food safety reasons.

[real-shul-stories]

"please don't get upset"

caller opened with “Shalom. is your Rabbi there?”. When I told him the rabbi wasn’t available, he asked if I was Jewish. When I said I was, he said “Please don’t get upset, it is not my intention to offend you, but I’m just wondering - why do you reject Yeshua?”

Me: uhh. Him: I hope you aren’t upset with me. Me: I’m not upset, I’m just uh. Formulating my response. I guess I don’t follow Jesus because I… don’t? Like what Him: Did you know that there are ethnic Jews? Me: uh— Him: I know there are the different denominations like orthodox and conservative and reform, but there are also ethnic jews who can trace their lineage back to abraham and isaac me: uh huh… him: and did you know that the words ‘rabbi’ and ‘synagogue’ don’t appear in the old testament, only in the new one? me: is this supposed to be some sort of gotcha. because of course they don’t, the rabbinic tradition came about well after the torah was written, after the destruction of the templ— him: Can I ask you this—have you read the new testament? me: no…? him: If you get a chance, can you go online and read the new testament? and pray about it? me: please don’t get upset but i’m not going to do that

[real-shul-stories]

Series of 20 emails from a single guy who seemed to be LARPing a complete nonsense military operation in our inbox. 27 other unwilling participants were CC’d on these emails (not BCC’d.) One replied all to say “I don’t think I was meant to be on this email chain…”. Many others replied all to request they be taken off.

I finally snapped and replied all to everyone but the spammer, saying “Please just block him, he’s clearly unwell and unlikely to honor requests to take people off his list. And stop using reply all, you’re driving us all crazy.”

No further emails have come in.

[real-shul-stories]

Call from a synagogue staffer at a conservative shul on the east coast. She said they were doing some research about services at other conservative synagogues, and she wanted to know if we had a YouTube channel or some other repository of old service streams she could watch.

Me: “Funny story….”

The funny story is we actually had a community-wide argument about whether to continue streaming shabbat services "after" the pandemic, once the immediate threat to life had passed. Many people felt that knowing a camera was running in the sanctuary negatively impacted their worship experience, but an equally large faction felt that the benefits of streaming (such as being able to watch a service when you’re sick, or allowing homebound grandparents to watch b’nai mitzvah) far outweighed the drawbacks. The compromise we reached was that we could continue streaming only if we didn't record the streams (read: keep the VODs) or make them available to be viewed later.

[real-shul-stories]

Call from an older member who wanted to register for another organization's event but was having trouble registering online, and wanted someone to help her with it. I agreed to help fill the form out with her over the phone. When we got to the payment section for the $5 tickets, she said “but I paid already.” And I was like what. how. and she said “I just sent the check in the mail like a good Jewish girl when a charity asks for money.” And I was like well. i don’t think it counted toward registration. It’s not going to let me proceed without paying online. and she was like “I don’t understand. I donated much more than $5, why aren’t they letting me sign up?”

She said she’d tried contacting them about registering but hadn’t heard back from anyone yet. I offered to email them on her behalf (maybe with my synagogue email they’d give me the time of day?) but she just sighed and said “I don’t know how much help that would be.” There was then dead air as I ran out of ways to tell her I could not fix her problem and she still adamantly expected me to be able to bypass the payment somehow.

[real-shul-stories]

(after like 5 minutes of me answering the caller's questions)

“This is going to be a really stupid question, my love… what is the name of your synagogue?”

[real-shul-stories]

a construction guy came to the door and asked if we were an orthodox congregation. I said we’re conservative, which is somewhere between reform and orthodox.

He then said “oh, so like you include born-agains?” and i was like sir this is a jewish? synagogue?? we don’t have. what.

He thanked me and then left

[real-shul-stories]

call from a non-jew who asked if any clergy were available to answer a question. After some needling I finally got her to ask her question: she had heard on the radio from a catholic preacher that there were going to be 3 straight days of darkness, starting this thursday. she wanted to call and check with a rabbi to see what the jewish teachings on it were, & whether she should be worried.

she mentioned having a messianic "jewish" partner (ick) who had told her completely straightfaced that all jews really did believe the 3 days of darkness were coming. she was curious if our rabbis had warned us about it, and contacted us so she could hear it "from the horse's mouth" directly. Despite insisting she doesn’t listen to “off the wall” things she seemed genuinely concerned that this preacher was telling the truth and we were really in for darkness this week.

(I told her it probably wasn't happening and sent her on her way. but if there's a freak volcanic eruption that covers the area with an ash cloud for 3 days i'll apologize for making fun of her online)

[real-shul-stories]

Caller opened with “Do you have any rabbis on duty?” When I answered no and asked if it was a rabbinic emergency, he said he needed to discuss a personal matter with the rabbis.

I told him the rabbis weren’t available asked his name. He gave his first name only. When I asked for his last name, he said “I don’t like giving my last name out to people.” He said he’d call back later and hung up.

[real-shul-stories]

“Hello good afternoon, I am calling to try to get in touch with your employee named Congregation?”

[real-shul-stories]

“I don’t go to church there, but I go to church elsewhere. I have an odd question.”

(Me: try me)

“Ok, but it’s pretty weird… I’ve been doing bible study and we’re reading the Book of Daniel. We got to chapter 7 verse 9, and I realized my translation is like the opposite of what my peers had, even though I was using the King James version. I’m looking for someone who can read it in Hebrew and tell me what it originally said.”

Out of curiosity I went and looked up both the KJV translation and a couple of the translations in books in our library. They were all essentially the same with only a minor difference in wording. I wonder about the version her friends had.

[real-shul-stories]

Call from a man who sounded very nervous. “Is there a human I can speak to, to ask a question?” He said he was hoping to speak to a rabbi, but since I was the only person there I offered to field his question. He did not once ever get around to asking his question.

He hesitated a lot and seemed very out of his depth. He said he was studying tanach, but that it confused him. He also called god “Yah”, which is not something a Jewish person tends to call god, but his pronunciation of other Hebrew words was pretty spot on so it was hard to get a read on whether he was Jewish or not. He said he was looking for answers, but that he was confused about some aspects of synagogue - he feels like he’s generally a well-mannered individual, but has felt unwelcome in synagogues.

I eventually offered him an out (“Sorry I wasn’t able to be more help”) and he mercifully hung up.