"Are you, by any chance, Jewish?"

"Are you, by any chance, Jewish?"

I've been asked this question more times than I care to recall, and always by the same people in slight variations of the same context. And it always bothers me.

The first time was my sophomore year of college. I was running out of my dorm in order to go back home to The Bay State in order to celebrate my grandfather's 85th birthday. It was Simchat Torah, I believe, and it was a group of Chabad associated students wanting to stop me so I could put on tefilin and fulfill that mitzvah for the day.

But not realizing that these people don't stop talking and have no regard for human decency outside of their own being, I didn't ignore them or walk away, I gave them the best response I could ever think of.

I took off my glasses, turned to give them a profile view, and said:
"With a nose like this, could I be anything but?!"

They laughed and started to wrap me in tefilin, as I was objecting that I was already running 15 minutes late for my train back to Boston and my family would kill me had I missed it. Did they care? No. Because to them, this mitzvah was more important than, well, me.

And I know that sounds self-centered, but trust me, it's not. And if you hang around for the rest of this entry, I'll show how my 'me' attitude is less selfish than their 'mitzvah' attitude.

Now for reasons I care not to get into, I've never been a big Chabad fan, and this lack of respect for me and my schedule -- and by extension my family -- was just the latest and most personal thing to add to my list.

(By the way, my train was 45 minutes late, so I didn't miss the train...but had the train been running on time, I would have been 5 minutes late between the 10 minutes Chabad took up of my time and the 5 minutes the cops in Union Square doing random bag checks took up...that's right, the NYPD wasted less of my time than Chabad. Thus, quantitative evidence that bureaucracy is less of a waste than religion...but I digress.)

I have since been asked this question many times -- always by Chabad, and always in the situation of being asked to do a mitzvah. Whether it be put on tefilin or light shabbat candles or sit in the sukkah, it has never been just to say "Way to be Jewish, man!" "Keep on keepin' on!" or "Here's a scholarship opportunity for fellow members of the tribe!" (I would also accept: "You're a good looking guy who obviously has his life together and I think you should meet my beautiful, sweet, smart, and wealthy sister!") Every time, I have come up with some excuse to keep on with my daily life without a constant reminder of my religious upbringing -- or more accurately, their perception of my religious upbringing.

Fast-forward to today.

The 'Mitzvah Mobile', a large black van with men in black hats dawning payis (and one man smelling of cheep liquor), pulled up to a parking spot on the east side of Sixth Avenue between 12th and 13th Streets -- a block I had to walk 6 times today.

On the sixth time walking by, one of the men yelled out, "Are you, by any chance, Jewish?" I didn't have time or desire to deal with these people. I was already running later than I wanted to for a meeting (which I, admittedly, forgot was canceled so I wasn't actually late...) on the 5th floor of one school building.

I admit, I feel bad that I totally ignored him. I pretend as I do when I have headphones in that I couldn't hear him only to realize when I got inside that I did not, in fact, have headphones in. He even made sarcastic comments to me, obviously upset by my rudeness. But I was more bothered by his implication that it was implied that I would stop my day just to talk to him more than I was bothered by coming off as a jerk.

(Again, I apologize for coming off as selfish. And perhaps I am, but...sit tight...my rant is just beginning.) (As a thousand mice click elsewhere...) (Who are we kidding; I only have 6 readers...)

So as I turned right onto 13th Street, starting to feel a little bad for being a jerk, a woman with a 2-baby wide carriage stopped at the apartment building on the corner. She looked around and tried to back her way into a door that just would not open without assistance. I, obviously, opened the door and helped her in.

At this point I realized that had I stopped and gone into the shady van with the drunk man, not only do I not know what would have happened, I would have missed this opportunity to really do a mitzvah! I mean, what is really the bigger mitzvah? To pray in a van on 6th Avenue, or to actually help a...gasp...actual living, breathing, human?

I don't think anyone would argue that it's more important to be a good person than to be a good Jew, so why do these people insist on making me be a good Jew and keeping me from being a good person? Yeah, this is a coincidence and I'm not going to say that fasting on Yom Kippur is dumb because I should be in a restaurant performing Heimlich on a choking victim, but my point remains that sometimes, there are more important things to me than religion -- and by extension, the Mitzvah Van.

Okay -- rant over.

For now...

(As 6 mice click 'unsubscribe')