Cathleen Falsani is the religion columnist for the Chicago Sun Times and the author of  The Dude Abides: The Gospel According to the Coen Brothers. She is guest blogging on Jewcy all week, and this is her first post.

A few weeks ago, I had a bad day. Epically bad.

I ran out of cash.

I lost my credit card.

I missed my flight.

And then, standing outside the United Airlines terminal at O'Hare, I dropped my cell phone, and as if in slow motion, watched in horror as it bounced and dropped over the barrier and onto the roof of the baggage claim area 10 feet below into an inch-deep layer of pigeon guano and dead cigarettes.

The Brothers Coen: The brother-directing/producing/writing team of Ethan and Joel Coen.

First I cried, and then I laughed as several chivalrous gentlemen from TSA, the Chicago Police Department and the city's Department of Engineering came to my rescue, eventually retrieving my (mercifully) still-working phone.

In those tense moments at the airport, beset by one minor calamity after another, I began to feel a bit like that poor fellow Job from Hebrew scripture (minus the nasty case of boils). Job lost all his money, his wife, his children and his health, but he refused to curse God. He was a good man, a serious man.

My having-a-bad-day woes reminded me of Larry Gopnik, the protagonist of the spiritually powerful (and powerfully funny) new film "A Serious Man," the 14th feature-length film from brotherly writers/producers/directors Joel and Ethan Coen.

Set in the Minneapolis suburb of St. Louis Park, Minn., in 1967, the dark comedy follows the trials and tribulations of Gopnik (played by newcomer Michael Stuhlbarg), a physics professor and all-around decent fellow whose life falls apart in the course of a few weeks before and after his son's bar mitzvah.

The Coens, the Oscar-winning duo who brought you "No Country for Old Men," "Fargo," "Raising Arizona," and "The Big Lebowski," among others, are natives of St. Louis Park and were reared in an academic Jewish milieu much like that of "A Serious Man." In fact, the Coens' parents were both university professors, and 1967 would have been the year Joel had his bar mitzvah.

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I was a child of the '80s in name only. I never watched Blossom when it first came out. I was aware of it only as - and, the few times that I did, it both intrigued me and turned me off: some too-cool kid who was two or three years older than me (at the time, a vast gap) who wore wild vintage-store outfits, used unnecessarily long vocabulary, and had a penchant for confessional D.I.Y. films about 2 decades before YouTube was even conceived of....It made me feel more than a little protective. This was my subculture they were stealing. She couldn't possibly be doing it right.

Little did I know, for its time - and even for ours - Blossom was completely transcendent. In the pilot episode, The Cosby Show's Phylicia Rashad, wearing a retro-'50s polka-dot dress, drew a map of the human ovaries on a sheet cake with a tube of icing in order to explain to 14-year-old Blossom Russo how her period worked. Subsequent episodes made pretty profound statements on puberty, body image, premarital sex and divorce and parental responsibility. The endings were always sugar-coated, but the TV show itself (which has just been released on DVD) was meaty and unafraid in ways that make current sitcoms like How I Met Your Mother and The Office feel positively sanitized.

As much of a travesty as grouping Blossom together with tepid '80s sitcoms such as Full House might be, mentioning the Mayim Bialik's name together with the name of the television show might be an even more audacious generalization.

In the decades since she stopped playing Blossom Russo, Bialik has not sat still. She's earned a Ph.D. in neuroscience and has undertaken cutting-edge studies at UCLA as one of the top researchers of Prader-Willi Syndrome in the field. (Read more about the disorder here, or sift through Bialik's blog to find out about her work.) She's also testing the waters of going back into acting, with recent appearances on Curb Your Enthusiasm and Bones. And she's also in the middle of another big revival: she's experimenting with being an observant Jew.

What first motivated you to start researching the causes of Prader-Willi Syndrome? Are you still?

I always had an interest in working with kids with special needs, and in the neuroscience department at UCLA, you generally meet a lot of professors and then drop into a project that suits you. There's been a lot of genetic research on Prader-Willi, and there's been a lot of behavioral research, but there isn't a lot of research combining the two..and that's what I thought I could bring to it.

I got my doctorate last year, so my research was my thesis. Since then, I've done some writing for organizations that raise money for Prader-Willi research. In the meantime, I've started acting again, and we just had our second child, so I've had my hands pretty full, taking care of him and doing auditions.

Have you been auditioning a lot?

Yes, actually! Far more than I thought I would be. I'm auditioning for all sorts of things. I'm actually filming an episode of Bones tomorrow. I've auditioned for comedy, drama, movies -- anything they send my way.

Is it mostly one way or the other -- dramatic roles, films, or ironic stuff? Are you being selective about which roles you take?

Not really. I don't think I can afford to be selective. I'm just seeing what's out there, and whatever I do get, like Bones, is great practice to get into the swing of things again.

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In the Torah reading for Shavuot, which we just celebrated, we read, "...and they encamped in the desert, and Israel encamped there opposite the mountain" (Exodus 19:2). The Hebrew word for "they encamped" is plural, while the following "Israel encamped" is singular. Why the difference? The medieval commentator Rashi suggests that the singular expression implies that Israel appeared before God "as one man with one heart." On that one occasion there was no rivalry and no bickering.

I recently heard an expansion of this interpretation by Rav Gedalyah, a senior member of my shul. The man must be in his eighties, but he still makes it to the second minyan every morning. As for myself, I attend the early minyan, and after we finish praying a few of us stick around and drink a cup of coffee and a shot of whiskey, the final preparations before facing the new day. Rav Gedalyah usually stops by where we schmooze and wishes us a good morning and peace upon the entire House of Israel. A few days ago, however, he came earlier than usual and sat down with us for a few minutes. With Israel's sixtieth anniversary celebrations still fresh in mind, he told us a story from the War of Independence.

Like so many other Holocaust survivors, Rav Gedalyah came to the British Mandate of Palestine with absolutely nothing. Here he was quickly put to work, and when the war started he became a soldier. He and his comrades received little training and had almost no equipment, yet faced an enemy many times stronger. His motley crew was sent to Latrun, where Jordanian snipers on the hill picked them off one by one. One day when it was time for afternoon prayers the Israeli soldiers were only sheltered by a tent. Jordanian mortar fire pounded the area when suddenly one of the soldiers stepped into a hole in the ground. When he pulled out his leg he discovered that the hole was in fact the opening to a cave. They all took shelter there and started praying. Five minutes later, a Jordanian mortar shell scored a direct hit on the tent where they had previously been standing.

"Rashi explains the singular by saying that the Children of Israel were 'as one man with one heart,' but how is such a unity achieved?" asked Rav Gedalyah. "The experience of that day made me think of what the text says a few verses later: 'Moses brought the people out toward God from the camp, and they stood at the bottom of the mountain.' Betachtit hahar: According to the Sages, this really means 'under the mountain.' That day at Latrun we were quite literally under the mountain, we were in a hole in the ground, and I can assure you that I have never experienced a stronger unity than I did that day. And that is how we defeated the Jordanians: not through might, but through unity."

(Above: The view from the mountain of Herodium south of Bethlehem. Photography by Paul Widen)

One of the things I have always loved about Judaism is its dynamic, evolving nature—rich with tradition, but always cognizant of how important it is that the tradition be made relevant to our contemporary era. The existence of Midrash and Talmud, for example, remind us that there are gaps and silences in the Hebrew bible to which we must respond.

When we take steps, physically or spiritually, to more fully manifest our gender identities, we are fulfilling the commandment “to partner with God in completing the work of creation.”

 The article, of course, mentions the Midrash (I think it’s Rashi, but my Artscroll is forever disappearing) that says, in an attempt to make sense of the two conflicting creation accounts in the first two chapters of Genesis, that the first human being was an androgynous being. After the blessing, before the blessing: Ru Paul as a drag queen, and as himself. 

To be recited before the moment of transition: 

Barukh Ata Adonai Eloheinu Melekh Ha-Olam, Ha’Ma’avir L’Ovrim. Blessed are You, Eternal One, our God, Ruler of Time and Space, the Transforming One to those who transition/transform/cross over.

Barukh Ata Adonai Eloheinu Melekh Ha-Olam Sh’asani B’tzalmo v’kirtzonah. Blessed are You, Eternal One, our God, Ruler of Time and Space, Who has made me in His image and according to Her will. 

Barukh Ata Adonai Eloheinu Melekh Ha-Olam Sh’hechianu,v’kiyimanu, m’gigiyanu, la-zman hazeh. Blessed are You, Eternal One, our God, Ruler of Time and Space, Who has kept us alive and sustained us and helped us to arrive at this moment.

And, this is kind of gross, but I stumbled on this blog about a sex-change operation done on a cat by a veterinarian, pictures and all. There’s got to be a blessing for this as well . . .