Coming Out

For some reason, after being an incognito goy (non-Jew) in the Jewish Studies department at OSU it has come out: I’M NOT JEWISH!! I'm out of my own special closet of one, and the questions are flying. Why is a goy majoring in Jewish Studies? It wasn't that I was trying to hide being goy, but it just never came up. I've been operating a "don't ask don't tell policy."

The most recent exposure of being a goy came in my Hebrew class today. People were talking about going to synagogue and other fun stuff, and I admitted that I hadn't been to a synagogue in a while. (Which is true, because I have been to a couple of synagogues, just not in a while.) So one of the older students in the class asks me,

"What's a good little Jewish boy like you not going to Temple for?"

"I'm not a good little Jewish boy, I'm a good goy boy."

"You're a goy boy!?! I thought you were Jewish! Then what's a good goy boy like you studying Judaism so much?"

In all honesty it's a bit of a long story, and maybe later on I'll talk about it some more. But let me give the quickie sound bite answer.

In a previous post I listed some assumptions that I make in my religious writings. Number 4 (Judaism is at the heart of the New Testament) is probably the most important. The easiest way to describe it is a matter of perspective. It seems to me that the right perspective is firmly planted in the Hebrew Bible (and therefore the mindset of those who wrote it and were interpreting those scriptures in the first century AD) looking into the writings of the New Testament and the newly forming Jewish sect called the Nazarenes (soon to be known as Christianity). In order to get that perspective I have to be so deeply steeped in that community and mindset that it’s second nature.

Today, it seems that Christianity is starting to move in that direction, but everything I’ve seen has been “Judaism-lite:”

“Isn’t this cool? Jesus was, like, a Jew!”

“Ohmygod! Let’s all go get yarmulkes and prayer shawls with the Prayer of Jabez embroidered it!”

“That is totally cool!”

(The Prayer of Jabez on a prayer shawl is uber tacky and in my oppinion bordering on the profane. By the way, I did see said prayer shawl on sale in a Christian book catalog sent to me recently.) Anyway, some of the implications of a Jewish perspective on the New Testament take you in quite a different turn than much of what Christianity has presently traveled because much of Christian theology has been based on Greek thought and philosophy. For those of you on the edge of your seat, I’ll talk about some of those at a different time.

So that’s it, I’m out! I’ve been exposed to all my Jewish friends! Ahhhh, you know I feel better now. Do you think they have goy bars somewhere? Do you think they serve lox and bagels?