We hit chapter 100 in Book Two and things start to fall apart. As the narrative drags, David Tuchman and guest Luzer Twersky (star of the film “Felix and Meira”! Check it out!) start to lose their grips on reality. Do you want to see how crazy the Bible can drive two men? Want to know how ex-Hasid Luzer Twersky ended up playing a Hasidic man in an independent movie garnering loads of critical attention? Listen here:

Not gonna lie: not much happens in the second part of this episode’s reading. However, Luzer Twersky and David Tuchman have a bit of a breakdown trying to get through it. And you’ve probably never had as many disgusting thoughts about candelabras as these two do. Listen to episode 32.2 now, because it is a wonderful, wonderful mess!

David Tuchman translated the Tanakh as a comedy and called it OMGWTFBIBLE. Each month on his podcast, he calls up a different guest to read as many chapters of OMGWTFBIBLE as they can while they both make fun of it.

Jewcy is the proud (internet) co-host of OMGWTFBIBLE. Read more about the project here, and listen to previous episodes here.

(Image: Felix and Meira)

The post OMGWTBIBLE: Luzer Twerksy on Leaving Orthodoxy, Acting, and—Yes—Torah appeared first on Jewcy.

“Shanti is the most important thing,” the shopkeeper told me as we sipped chai in his cramped, hole-in-the-wall trinket shop, which I had wandered into by chance.

There was nothing unique about Rajnish’s shop, which was located in a narrow alleyway in a touristy area near Jaipur’s Amer Fort. All of the vendors were selling the same items: god statues, bangles, incense, Aladdin pants, knit bags, and every other knickknack you could imagine getting in India. I don’t know what drew me into Rajnish’s narrow shop. And yet, months later, I can’t imagine having not met him.

I entered his shop to browse—nothing more. He immediately welcomed me like a long-lost friend. I reminded him of his daughter, he said, as he pulled up a stool beside his in the rear of the store and went about pouring me some chai. I insisted that I was just browsing, and that I didn’t need the chai. He wouldn’t hear of it. I sat between him and his Ganesh shrine on the wall.

My immediate thought upon sitting beside the golden idol of Ganesh, the Hindu God of luck, was, This is totally idolatry. But I’m not worshipping it. So there’s that. What would my parents think, I wondered, if they could see me? Upon telling them about my plan to travel to India, my father, a deeply religious man, deemed the entire subcontinent impure: “makom avoda zara,” he called it. A place of idolatry. He was concerned for my soul. Given how far my Jewish identity has drifted from the Orthodox one with which he raised me, it wasn’t an outlandish source of anxiety.

When I was comfortable sitting on the stool—or as comfortable as you can be on a stool—Rajnish immediately started showing me his merchandise. I despaired, fearing another scam. My first few hours in India had been an exhausting trek around Delhi in a taxi operated by a tout intent on taking me anywhere other than the hotel where I’d reserved a room—the experience made all the more frustrating because I knew exactly what was happening, I just couldn’t do anything to set him on the correct course. Even a call to Chabad had been intercepted by one of his co-conspirators.

So when Rajnish started displaying his wares—“historic” brass keys, “hand made” notebooks, and “one-of-a-kind” hookahs—I was skeptical. But I listened politely as he pulled out the items. Then he showed me a pipe. “This one,” he said gesturing towards the engraved, pink piece of marble depicting the Hindu symbol for Om Shanti, “is for Shanti. You know Shanti?” he asked.

I indicated that I was not familiar with it.

He placed his palm on his forehead and gasped. “Shanti is the most important thing,” he said.

“But what is Shanti?” I asked.

He placed his hand on his heart. “Shanti is this,” he said.

I was naturally confused, and he could tell.

“Shanti is peace,” he said. “People work, people are stressed, but the most important thing is to be happy and enjoy.”

I laughed. That was easier said than done.

Rajnish wanted to help me find Shanti. “Shanti is good energy. Shanti is the center,” he said, “Shanti is knowing the earth. Shanti is the most important.”

We proceeded to spend the next three hours in his shop discussing Shanti and the true meaning of inner peace. “How do I find Shanti?” I asked, as if Shanti was a missing wallet I could find at the lost and found. Shanti comes when you’ve found a balance and inner calm, Rajnish explained, and that only comes from knowledge and understanding. When I asked of what, he simply pointed up.

I was starting to understand Shanti. But, since this was a religious concept, and since I was struggling with religion in general, I had a long way to go before fully internalizing it.

***

Over the last year, Judaism and I have had some highs and lows.

I was raised in an Orthodox Jewish community in South Florida filled with charitable, warm, family-oriented people who value religion. They also find innovation downright suspicious, and regard ambition in a woman as a flaw. Nevertheless, to my parents’ begrudging credit, I was always more of a freethinker. My parents are pillars in our community, but their backgrounds are unusual. My mother was one of the first female traders on Wall Street in the early 1980s, and my father is a Gibraltarian Sephardi. Despite their relative diversity, they deeply wanted me to fit into their community. I was expected to dress according to standards of modesty, and to marry a good boy from a nice Jewish family in my early twenties.

But when my ex-fiancé abruptly ended our engagement last year, my relationship to Judaism and Orthodoxy changed. I noticed how some people in my community started to treat me differently, and for the first time I started to really feel the connections between power and gender and status—and I didn’t like what I saw.

It became painful to be in a room with people who only saw me for my relationship status; to be in a room where girls were either talking about their own marriage prospects, or gossiping about others’.

Then I took a religion reporting class at Columbia Journalism School, where I was exposed to a whirlwind of new ideas, and found myself reevaluating my relationship to organized religion.

From my community, I had learned that Judaism was social and dogmatic, not spiritual. The way I related to religion had no bearing on how I related to God. When I struggled with tzniut, the Jewish laws of modesty, it was because I wanted to fit in with my friends and make my parents proud, not because I actually believed that God cared about the length of my sleeves.

My newfound disenchantment with people who, to me, represented Modern Orthodoxy, translated to a disenchantment with other areas of my religious practice—and dress was the most immediately apparent. Wearing the uniform of a community that I felt out of step with socially and culturally was a little like walking around in a Che Guevera t-shirt: I believed in some of the philosophies, but not how they were executed. I felt like a fraud.

My dissatisfaction with communal practice and norms led me to return to Jewish texts. I had hoped to find solace in the narratives and discourses that I had once spent hours hours debating. But instead of reconnecting with religious doctrines, I felt confused. How could today’s rabbis turn to texts that display a fundamental misunderstanding of science when debating the halakhic ramifications of women’s issues?

My faith, on the other hand, came from my home, and from seeing how my parents lived and treated others. That’s why no matter what happened—no matter how angry I was with God—I always believed there was a God. Eventually, that’s what I was left with: A belief in God (if not a strong connection to him), and an underlying passion for Judaism. But what was I to do at that point?

I tried to find comfort in my community, in the theology of my upbringing. I guess you could say I succeeded in some respects and failed in others. At some point, I stopped trying altogether. That’s how I wound up in India sipping chai with Rajnish and a Hindu deity.

As clichéd as it sounds, I needed to find myself. After the year I had—with personal struggles and professional wandering—I knew that I needed to go to a place that was completely foreign to me, but charged with spirituality. I hoped that the shock of the unfamiliar would bring me back to some sort of connection to God.

***

I left northern India, where I met Rajnish, to travel south. (No Floridian would opt to spend time in a cold climate when 80-degree weather is just a train ride away.) As I travelled, I started to internalize the meaning of Shanti.

Two travelers I encountered—Isaac, a nomadic American backpacker who went to India on a journey of self discovery, and Oriel, an Israeli who was doing his obligatory post-army India stint—helped me to refocus the lens through which I view God.

On a rooftop in Mumbai, Oriel, who was raised in a traditional Modern Orthodox home in Jerusalem, encouraged me not to think of religion as a series of rules. “Think of it as a way to connect to God,” he said. This, for me, was unique. Despite an extensive Jewish education, I never really learned about God. I was taught about religion, text, and laws, but not how to connect to a divine being. So it was interesting to talk to a 22-year-old Israeli with a similar upbringing about God. The fact that there were religious Jews who thought about God as a loving being as opposed to a dogmatic taskmaster was reassuring.

Nomadic Isaac, too, reframed how I envision God. At one point while we hiked along a snaking path on the side of a rocky cliff, he shared his perspective that God may or may not be an omnipotent being, but the concept could also refer to the spark of godliness in every person. Everyone is God. I didn’t realize it at the time, but walking with Isaac and exchanging ideas about God was helping me to find my own inner peace, my Shanti.

Once I started thinking about the Hindu concept of Shanti with my Jewish brain, it started to fall into place for me. In my mind, Shanti sounded a lot like a fusion between the first commandment of knowing God—“anochi Hashem,” I am the Lord your God—and the Jewish concept of tranquility, “shalva.”

In my experience, Shanti is the understanding that you’ll never really understand. I don’t know what is going to happen, I don’t know the root of everything, and I’ll never really know God. But, to me at least, Shanti is being okay with that, being able to make peace with the unknown. To quote Socrates, “I know that I know nothing.” Once I realized that, I was overcome with a sense of tranquility I didn’t even know I had been missing.

***

When I emerged from Rajnish’s shop, the sun had sunk low, and the pink city was glowing. It was beautiful. We took in the view together—a view Rajnish never tires of seeing—and then it was time for me to leave. Rajnish shook my hand vigorously and said he had truly enjoyed speaking to me. It occurred to me that I wanted something, a keepsake to remember what I knew, already, would prove to be a transformative experience.

I looked at Rajnish and said I wanted to buy the pipe. He was shocked—I had made it clear that I didn’t want to shop—but thrilled. I bought the Shanti pipe, not because of what it was (I had no use for a pipe), but for what it represented: the self-confidence and assurance that I had finally reclaimed.

Plus, he gave me a good price.

Previously: Breaking Up is Hard to Do—Especially in the Orthodox World

Rachel Delia Benaim is a freelance religion reporter. Her work has appeared in Tablet Magazine, The Washington Post, The Daily Beast, and The Diplomat, among others. Follow her on Twitter @rdbenaim.

(Image: Amer Fort, 2008. Credit: Robert Cianflone / Getty Images)

The post I Went to India, And I Found “Shanti” appeared first on Jewcy.

We’ve finally reached one of the most important parts of the Bible: the part where God shows Moses his butt, and God’s butt breaks Moses’s face. For real. Sure, sure, there’s other stuff about forgiveness and laws and two possible versions of the Ten Commandments, but who cares about that when Shulem Deen, author of “All Who God Not Return,” is reading about the glory of God’s butt?

That’s right, no one.

Tune in now. There’s no other reasonable thing to do.

David Tuchman translated the Tanakh as a comedy and called it OMGWTFBIBLE. Each month on his podcast, he calls up a different guest to read as many chapters of OMGWTFBIBLE as they can while they both make fun of it.

Jewcy is the proud (internet) co-host of OMGWTFBIBLE. Read more about the project here, and listen to previous episodes here.

David will be reading the next live show in New York at Beauty Bar with on June 22!

(Image: The Internet, Source of All Memes)

The post OMGWTFBIBLE: In Which We See the Backside of God. Literally. appeared first on Jewcy.

This is episode 26.3 of OMGWTFBIBLE, featuring David Tuchman and Michael Schreiber—the last OMGWTFBIBLE in the U.S. for 2014. This time around, God responds to the Israelites’ “whining” by throwing food at them. As gods do. And we learned that Marx totally plagiarized the whole “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need” schtick from the Torah.

Also, in this final piece of episode 26, David finally responds to all those religious guests who refuse to say God’s name. And Michael lets David know what he really thinks about the show. Listen to it all here!

David Tuchman translated the Tanakh as a comedy and called it OMGWTFBIBLE. Each month on his podcast, he calls up a different guest to read as many chapters of OMGWTFBIBLE as they can while they both make fun of it.

Jewcy is the proud (internet) co-host of OMGWTFBIBLE. Read more about the project here, and listen to previous episodes here.

Check back here in a week for the next installment of OMGWTFBIBLE. The next live show will be recorded at the Limmud conference in England in late December, but David will be hosting an open mic in New York before he departs for the U.K.! Bring your most horrible holiday stories to Beauty Bar on December 22 at 7:30 PM and share them with the world!

(Image: The Big Lebowski.)

The post OMGWTFBIBLE: A Great Jewish Tradition Begins—Kvetching About Food appeared first on Jewcy.

Have you ever set a plan in motion and slowly watched the pieces move into place? Did that plan involve pretty much murdering a country’s entire army in cold blood? If so, you’re just like Yehovah in episode 26.1 of OMGWTFBIBLE, preparing the Reed Sea (A.K.A. the Red Sea) for his planned drowning of the Egyptians.

This episode, host David Tuchman is joined by ad exec and Modern Orthodox Jew Michael Schreiber to read “Beshalach,” the fourth portion in the book of Exodus. The Reed Sea is about to split in two, and Michael has a lot to say about the forces that are dividing the Jewish community. Listen to it all here!

David Tuchman translated the Tanakh as a comedy and called it OMGWTFBIBLE. Each month on his podcast, he calls up a different guest to read as many chapters of OMGWTFBIBLE as they can while they both make fun of it.

Jewcy is the proud (internet) co-host of OMGWTFBIBLE. Read more about the project here, and listen to previous episodes here.

Check back here in a week for the next installment of OMGWTFBIBLE. The next live show will be recorded at the Limmud conference in England in late December, but David will be hosting an open mic in New York before he departs for the U.K.! Bring your most horrible holiday stories to Beauty Bar on December 22 at 7:30 PM and share them with the world!

(Image: Moses splitting the Reed/Red Sea in The Ten Commandments)

The post OMGWTFBIBLE: God Plans to Obliterate Egypt’s Entire Army in Cold Blood appeared first on Jewcy.

In case you choose to investigate me like Jonah Lehrer—I’m that important—I should warn you that a few of these concepts and jokes have been recycled from a blog post I wrote last year for my own site, The Anti-Girlfriend. There are only so many rib jokes out there.

In this week’s Torah portion, which is the first of the year as the cycle of readings renews after Simchat Torah, we encounter the creation of the world, the animal kingdom, man and then finally woman from man’s rib.

As a young yeshiva student, I never learned the obvious feminist critiques of this particular allegory even if the narrative was at times subtly presented as a reason for the “natural” pecking order—men in dominion over women. According to this view, Adam is the earliest known venture capitalist with an eternal equity stake in women’s bodies. In other words, a very early forerunner of the Republican Party.

Rather, my teachers explained it from the matchmaking perspective. Adam was lonely and noticed that everyone else—all of the newly created animals—had a complement. Bulls had cows. Male monkeys had female monkeys. (I suppose he Adam could’ve been patient until some of those female chimps evolved into suitable partners, but he was solidly in the Creationist camp.) Like the lead female character in every romantic comedy for the last twenty years, he was tired of being stuck alone at the singles table. But there were no sassy gay best friends back in those days, so he took his grievances to the Ultimate Wingman—God.

“God,” Adam said shrilly, “all of my friends are married. It’s not fair.”

As most know, God then put Adam to sleep and created a wife, Chava, from his rib. And because of this, men are compelled to seek out their missing rib in the form of a wife, who was created from it. In Bereishit it is written: “On account of this a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his woman.”

Superficially, it’s actually very cute—the orthopedic equivalent of those “best friend” necklaces you used to wear in middle school, with each friend wearing one half heart until the inevitable falling out over a guy or a nasty text.

It’s also nice to read a narrative where the man is depicted as the needy one, desperate to meet a mate, the one made to feel that there are simply no suitable women out there for him to mate with. (“I’m sorry,” Adam’s simian best friend must’ve said. “I just don’t know of a girl for you. All the women I know are married and apes.”)

But as a modern woman, the orthopedic soul mate narrative is troubling, and not just for the popular domination/subjugation narrative it supports. The biblical origin story of Adam, his rib, and the male quest to find a “helpmate” also provides some scriptural basis to the “dating” rules—that the man should be in pursuit and that a woman is supposed to wait around until a guy comes around and identifies her as the possessor of his rib.

I know it might seem like I’m taking this whole “rib” allegory too seriously, but as a result of medical experience, I’ve been forced to give this body part a lot of thought. You see, one third of my bottommost floating rib on my left side was removed and placed in my spine to fuse my spine. “I’m creation, upended,” I joked with my friends.

When I was 14, I was diagnosed with scoliosis, but mine was not the Judy Blume version of the spinal abnormality. I was no Deenie. Hers was relatively moderate, correctible through a brace. Mine was quite severe. By the time it was diagnosed, it was already in the operable range—above 50 degrees. A few months later when I underwent the procedure, the curve had jumped to 72 degrees. I was getting pretty close to being contorted into a right angle.

Typically, the surgeon removes a bone chip from the patient’s hip and breaks it into even small chips, which are then inserted in between the vertebrae. Like the two parts of a broken arm knitting back together, the bone chips fuse to the vertebrae, creating one solid, immoveable mass, correcting and arresting the growth of curve. Then titanium rods and screws are then inserted to act as internal cast.

But since my surgeon elected to perform anterior and posterior fusion on me—mostly due to the fact that I resolutely refused to wear a brace after the surgery—he removed a third of my rib since he was already in the anatomical neighborhood. Instead of being created from someone else’s rib, I was mended by own.

In the immediate aftermath of the procedure, I didn’t give this much thought. I didn’t think about what lay underneath the scar that stretched from behind my rib cage to mere inches from my navel. Mostly, I was horrified by the sight of it, collapsing in hysterics when the bandages were first removed.

But as the years progressed, I changed my tune when it came to the scars. (The other one runs down two-thirds of my spine.) I came to regard them as badass—signs of my ability to overcome a major physical setback. A year after the fusion, I went back to my beloved sport of gymnastics. In my mid-twenties, I added break dancing to my athletic repertoire.

Still, I didn’t give my ribs much thought until a couple of years ago when I started feeling intense pain and tightening in the left side of my chest. I thought I was having a heart attack and went to my doctor in tears. I was 27, a quasi-vegetarian who worked out five times a week with no family history of heart disease or problems. I couldn’t understand how this could be happening to me.

Thankfully (and as my doctor expected), my heart was not the problem. My ribs were. Specifically the ones on my left side were not as mobile and flexible as they needed to be in order to expand and contract for breathing because the muscles around them had tightened up. “Why the left side only,” I asked “and not the right?”

“Because you’re missing a part of your rib on the left,” the scoliosis specialist answered. “The muscles there have less skeletal support.”

And for the first time in thirteen years, I really missed that little piece of my rib.

I guess this means I sort of understand guys a little better—the need to pursue that missing piece of you. Of course, I don’t have to look much further than my back for my missing piece, but that’s really difficult. It’s really tough for me to twist because of the titanium and screws in my spine.

Anyway, I guess I’ll have to pursue my missing rib the way the men have—by pursuing a mate. Can you really blame me? I’m rib deficient, just like the boys.

The post Creation, Upended: Adam Isn’t the Only One Missing a Piece of his Rib appeared first on Jewcy.