Science!
What would we do without it?
Reminds me of when I freaked out a priest last year in Rome, on our way to Israel.
And when I say freaked out-I mean like GLAZED EYES, MOUTH DROPS OPEN!!!
We needed directions, and asked a random priest if he spoke English and could direct us to the Vatican.
(Don't these jokes just write themselves? "So a family of five Jews walks into Rome and ask for directions to the Vatican...")
He said "Sure, I can help you and my name is Trevor, I'm from Texas".
Look-it's a whole other story, but basically he was the nicest guy and I told him that my husband also hailed from a line of priests-the Cohanim were the priests of the Temple.
He kind of looked at me funny. I started walking him through the genetics of the priestly class-it runs from father to son (unlike being Jewish which is mother to child) and told him of the studies that had been made recently with saliva tests from self-identified priests of Ashkenazi and Sephardi/Mizrachi descent. I asked him if he had heard of Moses and Aaron the priests. I said-those were the original priests, so the Cohanim today are their descendants.
I swear it looked for a minute that he was going to have a heart attack.
Anyway, he was lovely-he insisted on giving us tickets to get on public transport, in exchange only for us to bless him in Jerusalem.
My husband still thinks he took a shine to me but I explained that girls are not his thing, and he's married to the Church blah blah. And he wasn't really my type-I mean, I don't usually go for the Roman Catholic priest "type". I tend to like the swarthy, Israeli type but there are exceptions of course....
BUT I DIGRESS....
Oh, and he also promised to re-read the Old Testament.
I think it was probably a life-changing moment for him, to reconnect with the Jewish roots of Christianity.
Very cool.
