Shabbat for the uninitiated

Last week Friday, Kyle smuggled me in to services at a "conservative" synagogue, one of the most liberal places of Jewish worship in the city. Dinner followed in the attached yeshiva, or religious school, where men study Torah full-time. She told me I had passed well for a Jew, but I'm not so sure. My light hair and eyes betray my Gentile identity, but fortunately, thanks to the desert air and he fact that I haven't cut my hair since I left Chicago, I have a semi-authentic looking Jew-'fro.

My resume of previous Jewish religious experience was short. I went to Friday services at Tufts U Hillel a couple times freshman year with friends. The first time, I was the only one in the temple with bare shoulders (a result of seeking wardrobe advice from a guy so gay that he didn't even know what women wore to Temple, he was so busy checking out the men). After the service, when the guy with whom I was mildly obsessed wished me "Shabbat shalom" and tried to kiss me on the cheek, I had no idea what was going on and accidentally turned my head away. On another occasion freshman year, my blonde goy roommate got drunk on two glasses of Manichewitz and spent the rest of dinner flirting with the rabbi. Then, for much of my junior and senior years, I served as unwitting Shabbat goy at the weekly Friday night dinner. On the upside, all of us student caterers got to drink bellyfuls of (kosher) Dr Brown's cream soda and eat leftover latkes.

Tonight, I am willingly being dragged to a different Shabbat service, which might be followed by dinner at the rabbi's house. If anyone out there believes in some sort of god, please pray I dont make an arse of myself!