There are lots of jokes that begin, "A rabbi walks into a bar." Sometimes the punch line comes immediately: "And he said ‘Ouch.'" But more often, in the jokes, he's with a clergy member from another religion. "A rabbi and a priest walk into a bar." It is unlikely that a rabbi and a priest would really go to a bar together. It is also unlikely that a rabbi, particularly a Chasidic rabbi, would go to a bar at all.

Except I guess sometimes one does.

I work in a bar. Last night, I had finished my shift and was sitting at the bar drinking a beer, talking with my friend Nina, another bartender whose shift had ended. The door opened and we turned to look at it. (When you work in a bar, even when you're not working, your head will turn every time you hear the door open. It's a Pavlovian response.)

In walked a man with white hair, a full beard, and payos. He wore a black kipa, a long black trench coat.

"It's a rabbi," I said.

"Uh-huh," said Nina, who is not Jewish and didn't think a rabbi in a bar was so odd. I mean, we have unusual people in our bar all the time. Earlier in the evening, a man wearing an "I am Hamas" armband had been drinking scotch and scribbling in a notebook.

"I mean, he looks like a rabbi," I said. "He could just be a religious guy, though. I don't know."

Nina remained unimpressed.

The rabbi approached me and introduced himself as Ephraim. I told him, in Hebrew, that it was nice to meet him. My Hebrew doesn't extend too far beyond that. So then I asked him, in English, what he was doing.

"I am here to meet nice Jewish girls," he said, and he leaned in to give me a big wet kiss on the cheek.

Nina and the bartender who was still working looked disgusted. I wiped my cheek with the heel of my hand. Ephraim asked me if I was drinking wine.

"No," I said, lifting my glass to inspect it (it really didn't look like wine). "It's beer."

Ephraim sat next to Nina and told the bartender to give him what I was drinking. She did. Then Ephraim lunged toward Nina, hoping she would be as accepting of a wet kiss as I had been.

"Diana," Nina said, "I'm going to kill you." She thought I had encouraged him. I suppose I had.

"I was curious!" I said. "A rabbi in a bar!"

Anyway, after we ignored him for a few minutes, he left, his beer mostly untouched. This isn't a great story. It's not funny, like some stories are that begin the way this one does. And it's not even really a story because it has no arc, no point, no clear ending. I just thought I should finish my week of guest-posting by telling you that sometimes, a rabbi walks into a bar.

I've noticed a pattern in my posts this week: I've been making lists. Lists indicate a tendency toward organization, which I fail to exhibit elsewhere in my life. So in honor of my newfound organizational skills and of the upcoming Jewish holiday Saint Valentine's Day, I offer my Jewcy readers yet another list:

My Top Ten Favorite Things About Valentine's Day

1.     Scripture Candy, the company that makes conversation candy hearts that say "God loves you." (This is the same company that makes Happy Birthday Jesus Pops.)

2.     People who say "Valentine's Day is just a Hallmark holiday," as if they came up with that idea themselves.

3.     The fact that no one knows who Saint Valentine was. (No one knows who Saint Patrick was, either. This stops no one from celebrating them with gusto.)

4.     The theory that Saint Valentine was actually a bunch of martyred saints, and our subsequent national decision to commemorate the martyred saints with expensive prix fixe menus.

5.     Men who propose to their girlfriends on February 14. These are the same men who lost their virginity on prom night.

6.     That it's the one day of the year when scary stalker types can call themselves "secret admirers." Cute.

7.     Frank Gusenberg, victim of the 1929 Valentine's Day Massacre, whose last words were, "I'm not gonna talk. Nobody shot me." Bad ass.

8.     The High Court of Love, established on Valentine's Day in 1400 in Paris. Women selected the judges based on their poetry readings.

9.     Valentine's Day 2007, when Hugo Chavez said he missed Condoleezza Rice.

10.    Folding red construction paper in half and cutting out half a heart, so when you open it, you have a whole heart, creased down the center.

Happy Valentine's Day, readers. May your stalkers become your admirers, and may you find meaning and truth in your candy.

Diana Spechler, author of Who By Fire, is guest blogging on Jewcy, and she'll be here all week. Stay tuned.

Since my debut novel hit the shelves in September, I've given about thirty public readings. I gave one yesterday, and I'm giving another one tonight (New Yorkers, I'd love to see you there...details at the bottom of this post). Readings can be the best part of publishing a book-fun and social and gratifying. But they can also be the worst. Sometimes, no one comes to them. And reading to a crowd of zero or three or even eight reminds me of the recurring dream I used to have where I was riding a Ferris Wheel, knowing that soon my ride would end and everyone would know the truth: that I was naked.

At one reading, in California, my audience consisted of a smattering of relatives, a counselor from my summer camp (hadn't seen him since), and some guy who had recently added me on Facebook and commented under one of my photos that he liked my green eyes. Which was flattering. I mean, who doesn't want her eyes admired by strangers? But it was also creepy because there he was in the flesh, the stranger who liked my eyes and probably hadn't read my book. And I felt terribly self-conscious because what if, in person, my eyes were less beautiful than he'd anticipated? I didn't want to disappoint my first and only fan.

At that reading, I fantasized throughout about being struck by lightning. I didn't want to die. I just wanted to go to the hospital. Something to put an end to the nightmare. I considered faking a seizure.

My book tour has been punctuated by appearances from ex-boyfriends and ex-friends. Once or twice, I've noticed children running around as I read (several times) the words "fuck" and "fucking." On a few occasions, someone has approached me with open arms, ready for a hug, and I've been unable to match a face with a name. But out of all the awkward moments, nothing has made me feel more awkward than the awkward questions asked during the inevitably awkward Q&A. There are a few questions that pop up repeatedly, and I cringe every time. Someone once told me I need a better game face. Well. Yes. I think I need a better game face. But in the mean time, I'll just share my discomfort with you. So here they are, the top three book tour questions that make me feel like I'm naked on a Ferris Wheel:

1.     How did you research sex addiction?

2.     How much of yourself did you put into your characters?

3.     How much of the book is autobiographical?

And here are the answers I've never given:

1.     How do you think?

2.     They're all me. They're all my many personalities.

3.     It's totally true. I call it fiction, but who are we kidding?

Anyway, if you can restrain yourselves from asking these questions, or even if you can't, come on out tonight. I'll be reading with the very talented novelist Karan Mahajan, as part of the Beatrice.com reading series.

The details:
The Mercantile Library Center for Fiction, 7:00 p.m.
17 East 47th St., New York, NY

Diana Spechler, author of Who By Fire, is guest blogging on Jewcy, and she'll be here all week. Stay tuned.

Yesterday was Tu B'shvat, which falls between Chanukah, the holiday of miracles, and Purim, the holiday that, according to Talmud, is "the end of all miracles." In other words, this is a miraculous time, which is great, because who doesn't love a good miracle?

But unfortunately, if you're not watching closely, you could miss a miracle, or worse, chalk one up to something mundane - like, say, coincidence, or odds. And then, because you are an ingrate, you might never get another miracle as long as you live, according to seasoned miracle-spotters, who will remind you that God only speaks if you're listening and that you should count your blessings.

So, in hopes of filling your life with blessings too numerous to be counted, I have compiled a list of Ways to Spot a Miracle.

1. A miracle is unexpected, but never unpleasantly so. For example, a pigeon relieving itself on your hair when you've just stepped out of the salon does not qualify as a miracle. However, a pigeon relieving itself on a park bench, moments after you've risen from that park bench-now that's a miracle.

*Note: If such a miracle happens to you, do maximize your appreciation of it by telling everyone you see for the rest of the day that you got up from that bench when you did because you "just had a bad feeling." Ill-defined "bad feelings" often portend miracles.

2. If a person seems like he might die, but then he doesn't? Miracle.

3. If you get to a store five minutes before it closes, that's not a miracle, but if you get to a store five minutes before it closes, and Chanukah's about to start in an hour, and you haven't yet gotten your niece a present, and it's the only store in America, well. That's got the M-word written all over it.

*Note: When this type of love miracle occurs, you might overhear the phrase "meant to be."

5. Miracles are always meant to be. That's why they're miracles.

I hope you had a miraculous Tu B'shvat. May you never again mistake a miracle for some other thing.

Diana Spechler, author of Who By Fire, is guest blogging on Jewcy, and she'll be here all week. Stay tuned. 

Diana Spechler, author of Who By Fire, is guest blogging this week as one of Jewcy's Lit Klatsch bloggers.  Her novel is about a family's struggle for survival after the youngest daughter is abducted. 

I wanted to start my week of guest-blogging with a post about current events, specifically with an homage to the most current event on Facebook: the "List of 25 Things About Me."

1.     My siblings and I all have scars on our foreheads. Mine is from a car accident I had five years ago.

2.     Eight and a half years ago, at the gym in the Hyatt Hotel in Jerusalem, I got hit in the head with ninety pounds of weight.

3.     When I get depressed, I think about the car accident and the gym accident and wonder if my despair is the result of those blows, rather than of narcissism.

4.     My celebrity crushes are Neil Strauss and Shakira.

5.     I miss the northern lights.

6.     I dislike blue eye makeup.

7.     I brag about donating money to NPR.

8.     I am hopelessly in love with jukeboxes, and was once wooed by a man who promised, "One day, I'll buy you your own jukebox."

9.     Another time, years ago, I fell in love with a man who thought he was Jesus.

10.    I feel comfortable with middle-aged women who wear too much perfume.

11.    I went to Catholic school for two years. I was the president of the whole middle school. My classmates attended my Bat Mitzvah.

12.    I faked a learning disability in my high school French class, and then got caught when my French teacher told my mother I was doing well with my French, considering.

13.    My drug of choice is Belgian beer.

14.    As a child, I had prophetic dreams.

15.    I once lost use of my right hand for eight months.

16.    Growing up, my whole family slept in water beds.

17.    I cried for eight hours over Fried Green Tomatoes.

18.    My favorite name of all time is Strom Thurmond.

19.    Sometimes I recommend books to people just because I like the titles.

20.    I fantasize about being an excellent pool player.

21.    I love the words salacious, quixotic, reciprocity, and light.

22.    Every morning of our senior year of college, my roommate and I turned on the TLC channel and danced in front of the television, sometimes for hours. For unclear reasons, we called it Ukrainian Aerobics.

23.    I like watching people expand and contract the screens on their iPhones. They look like magicians.

24.    In Turkey, when I was twenty, a guy selling rugs in the street offered me a job selling rugs in the street. I still fantasize about that alternate life, but now think it wouldn't be much different from the life I live, or from any other life I might have chosen.

25.    I think the most interesting thing about these lists is the stuff the list-makers choose to omit.

Diana Spechler, author of Who By Fire, is guest blogging on Jewcy, and she'll be here all week. Stay tuned.