That's one of the things that I think is kind of interesting about me because, um, my, my parents moved out to this very far south suburbs of Chicago and promptly disassociated from Judaism. And then all of a sudden my sister and I became the age where maybe we better go to Sunday school, religious school, and my dad decided, okay, he's going to go research and he's going to take us somewhere so we can have a bat mitzvah. Because I think his mother wanted it. So, um, so my dad found that there were a couple of synagogues in Hammond, Indiana, which was within 30 minutes of our home, and he thought he was going to reform synagogue, but ended up at the conservative synagogue. And in the end thought that was the biggest mistake he ever made. But he enrolled us in the conservative synagogue. And I lasted less than a year. And my sister, who's three and a half years younger than me, went through the entire system and had a bat mitzvah, which I joyfully attended. But somewhere in the middle of my first year, I woke up on a Sunday morning and said, I hate it, I don't want to do it, I know I'm Jewish, that's not the problem, I just don't like having to go and my parents said, okay that's fine. So as my sister and I got older. My sister continued to be pretty involved in Judaism. Um, raised her kids to go to the synagogue. I married someone who was Catholic, and we just said, oh, we'll do all of the holidays and have fun with both of our religions. And so my son was raised until we moved to Spokane, my son was sort of raised to just do everything and enjoy it all. And, connected with both being sort of Christian and being sort of Jewish and being absolutely nothing in the meantime. So when I arrived in Spokane, um, I couldn't find any Hanukkah candles in December, and I looked in the Yellow Pages, couldn't find any place that sounded right except for to go to a synagogue. So I went to Temple Beth Shalom, and I said do you sell Hanukkah candles? And they said, of course, here's Hanukkah candles. And then the person who was the receptionist at the time said, let me get your, uh, your name and your address and we'll send you our bulletin. And I said, no, no, no, I don't want to be a part of this. She goes, no, you can just know what we're doing. And then the next time you want Hanukkah candles, you will come here and get Hanukkah candles. So as it turned out, when I started to get their monthly newsletter, I started reading a year later that they were short a teacher, which is a whole nother story. But I thought, oh well, it's spring, and I can help out with the teacher thing since I'm a teacher. And I walked in and I said, you know, I don't know very much about Judaism. I understand the holidays. I don't know a whole lot. However, I'm a teacher, and if you give me a curriculum, I can teach the kids. And that was probably in the early 1980s. And once I started teaching, I never stopped. And my family thinks it's hysterical because of their children, I was the least they expected to ever get involved in a synagogue and become deeply religious. And yet as it turns out, I am very involved, more so than my sister ever became involved. And, um, it's a very, very important part of my life now.
