What is a "Worst Jew"?

Is it…

A.) Someone that eats during Yom Kippur and then lies and pretends to be hungry whenever anyone Jewish is around. (NOTE: "Yom Kippur" can be replaced with “Passover” and “hungry” can be replaced with “pretends to be sad about not eating bread.”)

B.) Someone that has "accidentally" eaten pig and also meat with mother's milk lots of times over the course of his/her life and by accidentally, I mean "Not accidentally, but doesn't want to admit that to any Real Jewish People that would be disappointed and judge-y."

C.) Someone that every year gets an incurable case of the giggles during Yom Kippur, the most serious and saddest day of the Jewish calendar year. To be fair, this is largely the part of someone’s wisecracking-sass-in-the-pants-joke-whispering-during-the-part-of-the-service-where-you’re-supposed-to-be-mourning-the-dead (deep breath) little brother who is also in his own special, adorable way a scoch of a “Worst Jew.”

D.) Someone that refuses to call his/her nose "Jewish" and insists that it's "Roman." But if your schnozz-ma-tozz is big enough to have its own flag and state bird, you are a Heeb, my son!

(Few centimeters short of an organized system of government with national funding for the arts, here)

E.) The Author of This Blog.

(Me and my "Roman Centurion meets All the Hebrew Slaves in Egypt" nose at its least flattering angle, though there are literally HUNDREDS to choose from.)

F.) All of the above.

If you don't know the answer, you haven't read the title of this blog.

(The answer is F. I will help you out JUST THIS ONCE and then no more!)

Okay, so nobody just decides to be “The Worst Jew There Ever Was.

Except maybe Woody Allen after he (you think I'm going to say started having love-times with Korean Stepdaughter WhoreMouth but I'm actually going to say) made "Mighty Aphrodite" and then never even tried to make a good movie ever again.

Or Julio Iglesias after he started making music.

Or Jesus Christ after he started another religion.

To be fair, being a Worst Jew can be fun times. Cheeseburgers! Christmas presents! Not feeling guilty about giggling about Orthodox Dudes’ Sideburns!

But being a Worst Jew can also be lonely and sad and crying-times when you look around at your life and for all the shellfish you eat in its many forms, you don’t have that big, huggy, without-tradition-our-lives-would-be-as-crazy-as-a-Fiddler-on-the-Roof-Sunrise-Sunset feeling you can only get from being a Good Jew. Or Passable Jew. Or even just a Not Worst Jew.

Well, no more crying times. I’m putting on a new dress. I’m going to aim to become a Slightly Better Jew and hopefully all the adults that helped me with my bat mitzvah and all the once-kids-now-twenty-somethings I went to Santa Barbara Reform Organized Temple Youth and Jewish Community Center Youth Group with will have less reasons to be Jewbarrassed about knowing me.

And I’m starting by learning Hebrew.

(If this looks backwards to you think how I feel, I have to read it!)

(It is backwards, that's what happens when you photograph things)

I'm going to do it, guys. And then I'll be a Real Jewish Girl after all. To life, to life, L'Chaim!

Next Post: How learning Hebrew is so hard it makes me want to rip out my own eyeballs but I can’t stop now because I paid too much money for my class to stop after basically a week.