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Sightings: The Jews Who Turned Out NOT To Be

November 8, 2012 by Patrick Beaulier


Here are two stories of Jews that turned out not to be, from Sarah Bas Avraham, who lives in small town Virginia.

I was coming home from the hospital and was chatting with the driver of my taxi. She began talking about her church and asked which church I attended. I said I didn’t, as I am Jewish. This fascinated her and she asked some questions. She then said that there was a synagogue in Abingdon (where I live). As I had lived there almost a year and had dome some investigating, I was certain there wasn’t, but she was insistent and described where it was, then drove me to the location (Abingon being a small town).

It was THE CATHOLIC CHURCH!

I couldn’t help but laugh, though I didn’t want to hurt her feelings. On the way home I told her that if the building has a cross and the words “Jesus or Christ” in the name, it isn’t a synagogue!

The other incident occurred with the only bagel place between here and Knoxville. A friend of mine insisted that it was owned by Jews and that I could get some Jewish things (she wasn’t sure what) from their store. This sounded plausible to me, so I looked forward to my visit to the bagel place with much anticipation. We went on a Friday morning. We went in, and I ordered a dozen salt bagels. Then I went to check out the Judaica in the back of the store. I only had to look a minute when I soon found out that this was NOT a Jewish store at all but a “Messianic Jewish” establishment. Everything was geared around Yeshua. I felt like the victim of a bait-and-switch! After we had gotten our bagels and left, I told my friend that, contrary to her belief, the bagel place was really run by a group of Christians. She was most disappointed. “But they’ve got that Jewish stuff in the back.” She protested. She is a Pagan, so I explained a littled about Jews vs Christians.

So I had two instances where things that were putatively Jewish turned out not to be after all. For a small area, that’s a high ratio!

Sarah Bas Avraham blogs on PunkTorah about her misadventures as a Jew living in rural America. Check out her last blog about Jews and BBQ.

Filed Under: Rants Tagged With: bagel, convert to judaism, convert to judaism online, darshan yeshiva, judaica, messianic, online conversion, patrick "aleph" beaulier, patrick aleph, punktorah, rabbi beaulier, rabbi patrick aleph beaulier, rural jewish, sarah bas avraham, small town jewish, southern jewish

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