My friend Cat and I have been talking about going to a Shabbat service all year, but we're both busy college students and could never find a Friday evening when we were both free. With finals starting next week, our schedules finally matched up and we attended our first Shabbat service in Manhattan. Well, my first Shabbat service ever. Which is precisely why I refused to go alone.

I'm not going to lie, I do consider myself Jewish, but at this point, it's kind of more "barely Jewish". I was born Jewish but raised Catholic, which is just a confusing happenstance all around. I've been "finding myself" since I got to college, if you'll forgive the cliché, and decided to give this Judaism thing a try. I've been doing lots of reading, but the books don't tell you exactly how to be a good Jew. But maybe I'm just reading the wrong books.

Regardless, going to my first service that wasn't a Bar or Bat Mitzvah was an intimidating...

Continue reading...