The Perfect Jew

When I told my wife that we would be observing Shabbat as the next step on my quest to become the Perfect Jew, she acted as if I had announced I was leaving the Tribe to become a Buddhist. She assured me that she would always love me and then added, “I’ll miss you.”

We’ve both always felt like the Shomer Shabbat live in a different world, one we associate with the ultra-Orthodox we’d seen as twentysomethings in Jerusalem. Back then, the weekly sounding of the Shabbat siren meant another day of forced abstention and deprivation. Buses stopped running; shops and restaurants were closed. It was a wasted day.

No bacon sandwiches here: Celebrating the end of Shabbat at the Wailling WallBut I found ways to adapt. Learning that Domino’s Pizza delivered on Friday nights, my roommate and I spent our Sabbaths in front of the television, watching poorly dubbed kung fu movies as we polished off a box of wine. We even discovered a bar that sold Palestinian beer and bacon and cheese sandwiches, and close to sunrise, we stumbled drunkenly home to our apartment as the streets filled with the faithful on their way to synagogue for morning prayers.

Now, as forever-fatigued parents, my wife and I typically flop into bed well before 10:00. Since we don’t do anything on Friday nights, I reasoned, we might as well try keeping Shabbat. My wife finally agreed after I promised her that we wouldn’t spend the week tearing toilet paper in preparation for the Sabbath.

Rabbi Arthur Green, a Reconstructionist rabbi and Rector of the Rabbinical School at Hebrew College in Newton, Massachusetts, seemed a little wary of my quest to become the Perfect Jew. He agreed to meet with me, but only after I had read an article he had written about sacred time and sacred space which began: “Shabbat, the day of holiness and rest, is the central religious institution of the Jewish people.”

As I absorbed his words, I realized I had brought a misguided mindset to my quest. I had worn a kippah for the shallowest external reasons, making a fashion statement rather than taking a spiritual leap. I had dunked in the mikvah because it sounded fun; I had learned to negotiate because I wanted to feel like a big shot. As for Shabbat, I had mocked it as an outmoded tradition that was strictly the domain of religious obsessives, but now I became aware that observance of the Sabbath has historically been the most obvious sign of being Jewish. By ignoring it, I was arrogantly rejecting centuries of tradition and wisdom because I was too lazy to learn what it was all about.

Shabbat doesn't have to be about arbitrary rules: Pre-ripping not requiredMuch to my relief, Rabbi Green understood my concerns that Shabbat observance had been hijacked by a certain population of Jews. “That hijacking took place in the first or second century when the laws of Shabbat became very detailed. But there is no basis in the Torah for all the details of Shabbat law,” he explained. The Torah only forbids work, strictly defined as the lighting of fire and gathering of wood. Rabbi Green continued, appending that the ancient Rabbis added all of those laws to make Shabbat very exclusive and protected. But he favors a more liberal interpretation of Shabbat, and has created his own list of Shabbat dos and don’ts.

Why would a committed secularist like myself want to keep Shabbat? “We are living through one of the great ages of the speeding up of consciousness,” says the rabbi, who is Professor Emeritus of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies at Brandeis University. “Just watch kids following those little critters across the screen on videogames. The idea that we have to turn the screen off and be face-to-face and talk to live people across a table might be revolutionary a generation from now.”

Shabbat, as I learned, is a social institution, built into Judaism so that we have time to rest and reconstitute ourselves. It’s less about denial than it is about reward. At heart, it’s a weekly holiday in celebration of the creation of the world, and it is meant to be rich and enjoyed and to have a different texture from the rest of the week.

I would need that rest, since getting ready for Shabbat was the most stressful event since my son’s bris. It took me nearly five hours to shop and prepare enough food for Friday night dinner and Shabbat lunch, to tape over light switches so that I wouldn’t inadvertently break the Sabbath, set timers for lights, craft a spicebox out of tinfoil and cloves, hide my telephones, and tear myself away from the alternate universe of the Internet. Lastly, I had to remember to turn my oven down to 200° and leave it on, so that we would have warm food at lunch the next day. I took a shot at convincing my wife that I wasn’t allowed to change diapers on Shabbat. But she wasn’t persuaded of any strict halachic basis for that.

Suburban sabbath: Friday night lightsWhen Friday night fell, something amazing happened: I heard silence, true silence, for the first time in a long time, as if my house had taken a breath and let out a deep sigh. We enjoyed a quiet dinner with friends, and my wife and her college friend geeked out like a couple of day-school veterans and sang Hebrew songs after the meal. I resisted the temptation to spin my favorite Rancid CD to drown out their warbling.

As we slid into bed, I remembered what Rabbi Green had said about having sex on Shabbat: it’s actually a double mitzvah. To clarify, singles: Beer-goggled hook-ups at the local bar don’t count. This two-for-one special only applies to married couples. In the darkness of our bedroom, I had no difficulty fulfilling that mitzvah. Without the distractions of my nightly podcast and my wife’s New York Times crossword, I followed Rabbi Green’s advice to the letter, and I felt, for the first time, like the Perfect Jew.

As we walked to our local synagogue the next morning, it was as if we had stepped out of history, out of a woodcut etching; a tall slim kippah-wearing Jew and his wife and baby, trudging timelessly to synagogue. Though Rabbi Green had said we were not required to pray on Shabbat, we felt that we should visit our local synagogue for the first time.

It took over an hour for a minyan to gather in the traditional egalitarian shul, and aside from two or three others, we were the youngest people in the joint by almost 50 years. And as we sat listening to the charmingly archaic Ashkenazi pronunciation of the rabbi, I realized that though time may slow down today, Stewing it over: Set oven to 200, cook for 24 hoursthe hours and days will keep moving forward and before long these few faithful souls would be gone and the synagogue would stand empty. I didn’t want that to happen, because somehow I knew I would be losing a small part of myself. Though we had never met these people before, we were greeted as family, and I was invited up to the bima, to say the blessing over the Torah portion. It was the first time I had done so since my bar mitzvah.

When we arrived home, the computer inside our goyish oven had turned itself off, not understanding that we Jews actually like to eat lukewarm chicken and potatoes at Shabbat luncheon.

And as the day came to an end and we smelled the spices intended to bring us back to the regular week, I realized that in observing Shabbat I had not bound myself to meaningless regulations; on the contrary, I had unbound myself from the siren call of commerce, technology, and pop culture. I felt that I could think without the static of the modern world filling my head like a hive of buzzing bees.

A week later, as I found myself navigating my diaper-laden supersized shopping cart through the hellish morass of Costco’s Saturday rush hour, I felt a longing for that inner peace I had discovered within me. I tried to remember the words I had recited on the bima just a week before, hoping for a booster shot of Shabbat serenity. But they were already lost to me.

1. Stay at home and spend quality time with family and friends.

2. Celebrate with others, at the table, in the synagogue, or with those who can best share appreciation of God’s world.

3. Study or read something that will edify, challenge, or make you grow.

4. Be alone. Take some time for yourself, review your week, ask yourself where you are in your life.

5. Mark the beginning and the end of this sacred time with candlelighting and kiddush on Friday evening and havdalah on Saturday night.

6. Don’t do anything you have to do for your work life. This includes obligatory reading, fulfilling unwanted social obligations, homework for children, and preparing for work.

7. Don’t spend money. The atmosphere of Shabbat is best protected by a complete separation from commercial culture.

8. Don’t do business. No calls to the broker, no paying bills. Relax; it can all wait.

9. Don’t travel. This refers especially to long distances, involving traffic, airports, hotel check-ins, and other similarly depersonalizing commercial situations. Stay free of encounters in which people are likely to tell you: “Have a nice day!”

10. Don’t use commercial or canned entertainment. Stay in situations where you are face-to-face with those around you, rather than staring at the all powerful screen.

Suggested reading: The Sabbath by Abraham Joshua Heschel.

When it comes to negotiating my way through life, my strategy can be summed up in one word: utter failure. OK, that’s two words—but one of them was inserted by someone else, and I couldn’t talk him out of it.

Not that I even bothered trying. I’ve always been hesitant to ask for my pound of flesh, which may explain why I haven’t fulfilled my mother’s dream of becoming a lawyer. It’s also why—as my father, the lawyer, loves to point out—I didn’t make my first dollar until I’d reached my late twenties. If I was so determined to be a Person of the Book, he wants to know, why I can’t write at least one bestselling blockbuster, like his favorite writers Herman Wouk and Leon Uris?

Seriously, would you refuse this man a book deal?: Leon UrisAs I write this, my first collection of short stories is the 1,161,399th best-selling book on Amazon.com. So I have written a bestseller, technically. But my book netted just a four-figure advance, and last year I earned a total of $8,500 as a freelance writer and teacher. Now that my son has arrived, tearing locust-like through formula and diapers, I wonder how I am ever going to give him what he deserves—which is, of course, everything.

If you believe the popular stereotype, Jews are supposed to drive hard bargains, especially when money is concerned. But when my wife and I bought our first home, we immediately settled on the asking price, afraid we might lose our dream house if we put up a fuss. I’ve given away short stories simply for the privilege of publication, traveled at my own expense to do free book readings, and, when I do get paid, I’ve waited with the patience of Job for the check to appear in my mailbox. I know I’m never going to earn a lot of money, but I should at least know how to cut a decent deal.

Clearly, I needed someone to unleash my inner macher. So I went to see Moshe Cohen, president of The Negotiating Table, a Boston-area company specializing in mediation skills and conflict management. Cohen teaches a course on negotiation at Boston University’s School of Management and has advised many large corporations. He charges a hefty fee, but I stood my ground and refused to pay it—at least I would have, but it never came up.

Much to my relief, Cohen insists that I’m not alone: he has seen plenty of Jews like me, Jews who are not good at getting what they want. This might have something to do with growing up in North America, says Israeli-born Cohen: “Anywhere outside of the US and Canada, people are always negotiating everything.”

The Master Macher: Moshe CohenAs immigrants, previous generations of Jews brought that wheeler-dealer mentality with them from their home countries. It had long been a survival skill. The fact that Jews historically could not own land drove them into professions such as banking, money-lending and commerce, all of which consisted mainly of prolonged haggling. And of course Jews have been negotiating with a silent God for thousands of years praying for Redemption. The Torah even encourages a view of an Almighty who can be pushed around, if not over. Yes, the people of Sodom and Gomorrah got completely obliterated. But must that overshadow the wrangling Abraham did on their behalf? "The idea that you are allowed to question authority in Judaism, that you are allowed to push back is a cultural idea that promotes negotiation," says Cohen.

In a typical Jewish household, particularly at mealtime, opinions, questions and challenges fly back and forth with ferocious intensity, creating a sort of minor-league negotiating table where all family members are free to take a stance and swing. And do, often simultaneously. I think back to the Passover Seders of my youth. When the family elder asked how much I wanted for finding the Afikomen, it was a signal to me that a battle of wills was underway. My opening—and only—gambit: shrug my shoulders and proclaim that I haven’t got a clue.

Clearly, I still have a lot to learn.

Determined to toughen me up, Cohen leaves me with this challenge: find ten people who will say “no” to me. It may seem counterintuitive, but it turns out that it is much easier to get a "yes" than a "no." People are often afraid of conflict and would rather give in than make an enemy. He tells me, if there is something I want, firstly, I must be willing to ask.

The place where hondling was born: Jerusalem's Machane Yehuda marketGetting what you want, I soon learn, sometimes requires little more than a healthy dose of chutzpah: I ask a former teacher to read a manuscript I've been struggling with, I ask several synagogues for a speaking fee that could keep my son in diapers for months, I call a small publisher and ask him to take a second look at a revision of my novel that he had previously rejected. I ask my editor for 300 extra words to write this column (Ed. Note: How can I turn you down?) To my amazement, everyone complies, without question. I realize suddenly that all of life is a negotiation. I find I'm able to ask for and receive an extra potato with lunch at IKEA, a lower rate at a Washington hotel, free babysitting passes at my gym, erasure of my small library fine. It may be literally small potatoes, but for now, I'm a winner. I can feel my confidence grow by the day—I can make things happen simply through sheer force of will. So far, nobody has turned down any of my requests. It is even more difficult to get someone to say no than I had imagined.

But eventually, I discover that "no" can be used as just a starting point for negotiation and that patience and persistence is critical. When I try to return a dangerous baby gift—a mobile of tangled fishing wire, sold under the insane logic that it’s safe as long as the baby doesn’t play with it—I discover that the surly store owner is my biggest challenge yet. At first, she flat-out refuses me. But I’m not intimidated.

A successful negotiator must go back again and again, Cohen counseled, adding that by the third request, the person being asked is either really annoyed or says yes. I take Cohen's advice to remain silent after making a request, challenging her to speak first; the first to speak is likely to capitulate. I am even prepared to manage my emotional response to her answer; righteous indignation doesn't get you very far in negotiation. I persist, make a counteroffer, hold my tongue, suppress every instinct to tell her off, and wait. Commitment, after all, comes in small steps. I am not leaving until she gives in. It takes only thirty minutes to return the German-made killer mobile.

I have won, and I feel like a superhero, only with a better fashion sense. I can accomplish anything using Cohen's rules. Well, almost anything. I can’t say “No” to my baby son, and my mother still calls me ten times a day. Oh, and there’s no negotiating with my hard-headed dad. I can use every one of Cohen’s tactics on them, and they won’t budge. They’ve got my unconditional love, after all, and they aren’t afraid to use it against me.

***
Related in Jewcy: Our Jewish guinea pig tries wearing a kippah and visiting a mikvah.

1.) You must be willing to ask for what you want.

2.) Successful negotiators must be good listeners

3.) You must be comfortable with conflict

4.) Be prepared.

5.) Take "no" as a starting point for negotiating rather than an ending point.

6.) Be persistent and optimistic.

7.) Think of negotiation as collaborative problem solving.

8.) Keep your cool.

9.) You must be prepared to reframe your goals to meet your interests. How do you define success?

10.) Try and establish a relationship.

I should warn you that this article contains full frontal male nudity. But please, control yourself; there will be no soft-lit oohs and aahs, no writhing in ecstasy—just a man stripped down, and alone, at his most naked before God and his living waters. I'm going to take the plunge into the mikvah.

Wearing a kippah for two weeks, I felt like a complete impostor. I was still the same rascal who, as a teenager, had laughed at the ultra-Orthodox in their heavy wool coats during the heat of summer. I needed a real, deep, cleansing change, something to mark the spiritual divide between irreverent punk and father-to-be. I hoped the plunge would be like a nullifying act of a New Year's resolution, wiping the slate clean and allowing me to start over fresh.

Even More Important than the Synagogue: An ancient mikvah in JerusalemI am extremely chauvinistic about my Jewishness; no one has the right to decide whether I am, or am not, a good Jew. I write fiction about Israel and the Jewish experience where I delve into spiritual and political issues. But when it comes to ritual, I refuse to follow by rote. Am I ignoring the ancient rules of Judaism because I'm too busy watching American Idol? Have I honestly looked at the wisdom of my fathers and found it unworthy?

I knew religious Jewish women go to the mikvah, or ritual bath, to cleanse themselves after their periods (or for childbirth, conversion, or other major life changes). But I was only vaguely aware that the bath could purify men, too.

The tradition of ritual cleansing goes back thousands of years to its roots at the River Jordan. Historically speaking, mikvah was the most important cornerstone of any Jewish community, more important even than a synagogue, since according to some Jewish customs, men are expected to visit the mikvah every day. Others call for men to immerse themselves weekly, before the Sabbath. A bridegroom visits the mikvah the day of his wedding, and in some communities men must immerse themselves the evening after a nocturnal emission.

But the ritual of mikvah is also a symbol of personal transformation. And that’s what I wanted: a physical exercise that would bypass my judgmental brain and enter directly into my soul.

I imagined the experience to be a sort of shadowy hazing ritual with bearded rabbis chanting incantations as I sank into a murky pool. But all I wanted was a spiritual dip into a clean pool, where I could offer myself honestly to the water, my body in vulnerable repose, prepared for the metamorphosis into a more perfect Jew. In the end, I tried both approaches, murky and clean.

Beth Pinchas. in Brookline, MA, is the only exclusively male mikvah in the Boston area. Seat of the renowned Hasidic Bostoner Rebbe, Beth Pinchas is part of the New England Chassidic Center and caters to the pious adherents of all 613 of God's commandments. Following the biblical injunction for men to ritually immerse before the Sabbath, I visited early one Friday.

No Asbestos Here: The Perfect Jew likes his ritual bath cleanI felt like I had stepped into another century as I trudged, towel and soap in tow, through the mutterings of morning prayers. In my sweatpants and T-shirt, I couldn't have stood out more from the men praying in their black suits and hats, but they looked right through me as if the material world I represented was nothing more than a gust of wind.

Tucked away in the basement, the mikvah room was damp and dingy, equipped with two dripping, moldy shower stalls and a small greenish pool beneath jaundiced fluorescent lights. A sign announced that for the sake of good health, no asbestos was being used on the premises. The room was heavy with the stink of chlorine, so I dunked quickly, mumbled an approximation of a prayer and got the hell out of there. I felt neither spiritually nor physically clean after my perfunctory dunking, and I rushed home to take a hot, soapy shower, wondering why anybody would ever want to submit to such a ritual.

On the opposite end of the mikvah spectrum is the Mayyim Hayyim (Living Waters) mikvah. Founded by Anita Diamant, best-selling author of The Red Tent and The Last Days of Dogtown, the mikvah is a renovated Victorian home full of sunlight and tranquil earth tones, more a day spa than a bathhouse. Mayyim Hayyim is sort of a new age-y counterbalance to rigid Jewish orthodoxy; it’s not directly affiliated with any synagogue or particular movement within Judaism, and it caters to a diverse clientele.

HDTV: How freaking soothing is this?Aliza Kline, Executive Director of Mayyim Hayyim, met me in the bright reception area before a wide-screen high-definition television murmuring with the meditative rolling of the sea. "Mikvah has been shrouded in mystery for centuries," she began. "Our goal is to open up the ritual and make it less exclusive."

Mikvah immersion is presently going through a revival among non-Orthodox Jews. "A lot of people want to acknowledge change with Jewish ritual,” Kline explained. “For people who have not found fulfillment in studying Torah but are hungry for something meaningful and powerful and rich, this can really meet a need. And you don't have to speak a lick of Hebrew, or know the weekly Torah portion; you don't have to wear a kippah."

Perfect, I thought. Sign me up.

I arrived early the day of my immersion to shower, clean my nails and my ears, brush and floss my teeth, blow my nose, empty my bladder, and remove my wedding ring and glasses. I was to be as naked as the day I was born, without anything on my body marking rank or status.

But I also needed to prepare my spirit. The medieval Jewish philosopher Maimonides wrote, "If a man immerses himself, but without special intention, it is as though he had not immersed himself at all." As I stood naked before the mirror in the preparation room, my penis bearing silent witness like a bearded sage, I thought about the transition that immersion in the mikvah would help me mark that day: the shift from incorrigible slacker to (hopefully) responsible father.

Awwwww Yeah: The sexy mikvah at Mayyim HayyimWith its soft ambient lighting, heated tile floors, and shimmering waters, the bath could have been a hot tub at a luxury hotel; in such a setting one would not have been surprised to see a bottle of Cristal lounging expectedly in a bucket of ice, Al Green's "Lets Stay Together," playing softly in the background.

I unwrapped myself from a pure white sheet and descended the seven steps into the pool. The water was warm, almost viscous. I was reminded of Kline's words equating the mikvah with the womb, how for a brief moment in a floating state, not interacting with life, not breathing, you are surrounded by God. I dunked under the water and pulled my knees to my chest, trying not to touch the walls or floor while keeping my head submerged.

As required, I recited the short blessing for immersing provided beside the pool. I sank down again, felt the waters soft against my body, and thought of my son in utero. At that moment, I was experiencing some facsimile of everything he knew of this world. I bobbed to the surface again, and recited another prayer, this time the shehechiyanu.

Dunking a third time, I recalled a midrash about how unborn babies hold the answers to every mystery in the universe, and I wanted to stay there just a little longer to learn some secret that was just beyond my grasp, a secret my unborn son now knew and would soon forget forever. Then I remembered Kline's caveat that the mikvah is also "like a little taste of death—and then rebirth." And I released my breath and popped to the surface for the last time and recited the prayer again, wondering whether I had left a shell of the old me sinking slowly to the bottom of the pool.

Driving home, warm in the afterglow, I knew that something had shifted in me —not a sea change tsunami of the soul, but something more subtle, like a minute hand moving one click closer to the hour. I hadn’t changed one bit at Beth Pinchas; I was too distracted by the chlorine, the mold, and my lurid surroundings. In the bath at Mayyim Hayyim, though, the silence had allowed my subconcious to crack open, just a little. I relate best to the world through my fiction, so maybe it was no surprise that what crept though was the idea for my next short story.

I’m a bad Jew. I’m also a skinny Jew, an arrogant Jew, a neurotic Jew, an erotic Jew, and even a dirty Jew—at least I’ve been called each of those names more than once in my lifetime. But now, at 35 years old, with one book of fiction under my belt and a couple manuscripts in the can, I’m on the verge of having a son. And for the first time in my life, I want to be called a good Jew. (Or at the very least, one who’s trying to improve.)

I’ve been bad in all the familiar ways. As a child I sat on Santa’s lap and hunted for Easter eggs. In school, I slavishly dated Ukrainians, Latvians, Czechs, and Croats to the exclusion of Sarah, Rachel, and Esther. I’ve even worked for minimum wage on Yom Kippur. For years I neutered my family’s last name, chopping it in half to form Pape, somehow unaware of the papal connotations.

Judaism for me has always been a buffet where you decide to celebrate the feast of Passover but not observe the Fast of Gedalia; you give your son a bris, but not a bar mitzvah. I’m a pick-and-choose Jew, and for the most part, I’ve chosen not to pick.

By now I’ve outgrown Santa’s lap. I married a Jew, and I suffer through Yom Kippur services nearly every year, seeking some sort of community and belonging. So far, all I’ve found is hunger and crushing tedium. But the upcoming birth of my first child has me asking why I’ve turned away from the accumulated wisdom of my forefathers—and wondering if returning to that wisdom might make me a happier man, a better man, a good Jewish dad.

In Stars of David, a recent book of interviews with Jewish luminaries, New Republic editor Leon Wieseltier wrote, “I can respect heresy, I can respect alienation…. I don’t mind renegades or apostates... My point is that American Jews aren’t renegades; they are slackers.” He goes on to condemn secular Jews for not bothering to learn about the Judaism they are rejecting. I hadn’t been rebelling at all, according to Wieseltier: I was just lazy.

My mission was clear: to attempt to become the best Jew that I could possibly be—for me and for my child. Esquire ran a column in the 1990s called “The Perfect Man,” in which a poor schmuck named Carl Fussman attempted to reinvent himself from the studs up. I decided to follow his example and become the Perfect Jew. To succeed in this quest, I would have to bury long-held biases and open my mind to incomprehensible, spooky rituals. I would have to learn how to pray, how to dress, how to purify myself at a mikveh and how to honor the dead, how to negotiate like a macher, and how to respect my mother like a good Jewish son. I would have to disassemble the old me and build myself up again from the dust. Even if I don’t succeed in becoming a better Jew, at least I’ll be making an informed decision.

Wearing a kippah seemed an appropriate place to start. Growing up Reform, I’d never covered my head at services. In fact, I found the idea of placing an itchy cloth disc on my head so embarrassing that I didn’t even wear one at my wedding. But if I was faintly ashamed to announce my Jewishness with a kippah, then how could I become a Perfect Jew?

So I devised a test. I would wear a kippah for two straight weeks. Everywhere I went, everyone who looked at me would know instantly that I was Jewish. I’d immerse myself in the experience of public Judaism. And, as I soon found out, I’d learn that a kippah isn’t just a fashion statement—a lot is bound up in the act of wearing one.

To lead me on this quest, I chose Sam Tarlin, the longtime manager of Kolbo Judaica in Brookline, Massachusetts. Sam has outfitted many of Boston’s Jews over the years and used to wear a kippah himself, until the sheer bulk of his Jewfro got in the way. His store carries a dizzying array of headgear: There were simple leather kippahs in muted grays and blues, flat knitted kippahs that looked like my great-grandmother’s doilies, silken embroidered yarmulkes, large boxy multicolored caps, bowl-shaped felt skullcaps with silver stars sewn into the fabric, and Spiderman-festooned kippahs that brought product placement finally into the synagogue.

And they all made a different statement. The colorful Bukharan caps were usually favored by left-leaning, crunchy, Birkenstock-wearing types, and the felt ones were usually worn by yeshiva bochers, or seminary students. The knit kippas were popular with both Conservative and Orthodox Jews. I pointed to one with the much-despised (in Boston) New York Yankees logo and asked if it was kosher. “It doesn‘t matter what’s written on it; what matters is that your head is covered,” Sam told me. “Some people wear baseball caps.”

For a moment, I brightened at this loophole, but that would be missing the point. We were in Boston, where virtually every button-nosed Irish Catholic college kid within a hundred miles has at least one Red Sox hat.

Finally, I chose a simple blue knit with gray and white embroidery around its perimeter. Looking in the mirror, I couldn’t even see evidence that I was wearing one, perched as it was on the back of my head.

Thus clad, I began firing questions at my kippah guru. “Does Jewish law require me to wear a kippah? Do I sleep in it? Do I have to take it off before going to the bathroom?”

No, no, and no, Sam patiently answered. Believe it or not, there’s no Jewish law saying that you need to wear a kippah. It’s a custom, but it’s not a rule. As the Talmud explains, wearing a kippah is the sartorial equivalent of tying a string around your finger—it’s a constant reminder of the spiritual world. It also reminds us to behave. “When you are wearing a kippah,” said Sam, “you are representing world Jewry. So you are going to want to think twice before you act, before you shout at somebody in line at the bank or drive on the Sabbath or eat something that isn’t kosher. This is called marat ayin, causing someone to misunderstand Judaism.”

Out in the street I felt as if I had come out of hiding. My Semitic good looks notwithstanding, I always felt I blended nicely into my surroundings; in jeans and T-shirt, I was just one of the crowd. Now, everybody would know with absolute certainty that I was Jewish, and I wore the kippah with an unexpected mixture of pride and shame.

At my mega-big-box gym, as I hung upside down in the Roman chair, abs straining, kippah clipped stubbornly to my head, I felt that I was a fraud, a joker wearing a Halloween costume. I was no more connected to God now than I had been a week earlier. I was a bit player from Central Casting who didn’t even know his lines.

In my own paranoid mind, I imagined that people saw the worst in me as a kippah-wearing Jew: the rampaging Jewish settler, the crooked Washington lobbyist, the sickly Torah scholar. What built-in biases led me to assume that others would see me in the most negative light? Were they guilty of marat ayin, or was I?

As the days wore on, I realized that it was not enemies of the Jewish people who were singling me out, but Jews. In the supermarket, in restaurants, at the Target store, they nodded at me, just a subtle, wordless signal acknowledging that we were members of the same tribe. It was as if I had finally learned an elusive secret handshake. Were they quietly thanking me for seemingly upholding the tradition that was simply too much for them to deal with in their busy lives?

At dinner, my cousins Carol and Lewis laughed for a solid five minutes when they saw me in my knitted kippah.

“Just don‘t embarrass us and order pork,” patrician Lewis quipped, as he sipped his Dewar’s on ice.

I‘d never planned on keeping kosher as well; that was too much to take on all at once. Wearing a kippah, I realized, wasn’t just one item on the buffet, but part of an endless prix fixe menu full of expectations and responsibilities. As long as I wore it, I would have to tread carefully; no sarcastic comments to shopkeepers, no flipping the bird to idiot drivers, and no pork. The reputation of world Jewry depended on my good behavior.

It was a relief to take off my kippah at the end of the week. I tucked it away in my sock drawer until the next time I go to synagogue; at least then I’ll look the part, and my child will know that I’m trying,

I can’t say that I felt a greater spiritual connection to a higher being with my head covered, but I was conscious every minute as I wore the kippah that I was part of something bigger, that I was responsible to a greater community. I wouldn’t say wearing it made me a better person, but I was guided by the better angels of my nature, the way a muzzle keeps a junkyard dog from biting.

The next quest: Ritual purification in a mikveh.

N E X T

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Go: It might be easier to decide to wear a kippah if you personalized one.
Read: When did Jews start wearing skullcaps and just how necessary are they to remain pious?