Just become a mensch, my son

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This article was published 06/02/2010 (6044 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Jew and Improved

How Choosing to be Chosen Made Me a Better Man

By Benjamin Errett

HarperCollins, 262 pages, $30

In this light and likable comic memoir, Torontonian Benjamin Errett proposes to his Jewish girlfriend, Sarah Lazarovic, and then surprises everyone — including himself — by announcing that he wants to convert to Judaism.

Errett, now a 30-year-old managing editor at The National Post, isn’t quite sure where this impulse comes from.

His knowledge of Jewish converts is limited to Jerry’s dentist on Seinfeld and Charlotte on Sex and the City. He’s an agnostic, coming from half-hearted Protestantism on his father’s side and lapsed Catholicism on his mother’s.

When a rabbi tells him there is no "faith test" in Judaism, that what matters is how he lives his life, he finds a way to begin. A guy who’s a little skeptical about the idea of spiritual journeys takes his first steps.

Errett drags the slightly bemused Sarah along with him to weekly Jewish information classes, where he aces the multiple-choice tests, struggles with Hebrew and enjoys the arts and crafts (they make ribbon-covered matzo holders).

Together, the pair finds their synagogue and — just as importantly, according to the old joke — the synagogue "they wouldn’t set foot in."

They celebrate a Lazarovic family Passover, which combines a ritual meal with a ritual debate about who makes better brisket. They take a press-junket trip to Israel, partly to upgrade Errett’s knowledge of the Middle East situation (his current position being that "they should all just knock it off").

Considering he’s only recently become a Jew, Errett has a good line in self-deprecating shtick. He started at the Post writing punning headlines, and his style is readable, funny and cheeky.

In fact, his rather strict teacher at the Jewish information classes might find it a bit too cheeky. He refers to Yom Kippur as "God’s fiscal year end," and explains Sarah’s kosher lapses by saying that "bacon is a gateway food."

Still, this story of "goy meets girl" has a serious subtext. At one level it’s about a personal religious conversion, but it also functions as a more universal coming-of-age story.

Since the 1960s, young, educated middle-class North Americans have often put off the onset of adulthood, distrusting authority and dodging any obligations that might limit their individual freedom. That might be why many people avoid organized religion.

When Errett finally finishes his year of preparation and appears before a panel of three rabbis, he traces his urge to convert to his experiences at the funerals of Sarah’s grandmothers.

He found that traditions, even unfamiliar ones, offered consolation and a sense of continuity, and he began to feel that formal structures marking the transition from one stage of life to another might not be a bad idea. He values Judaism, he says, because it gives "ceremony to life’s important moments."

In the end, Jew and Improved is about becoming, as Errett’s co-religionists would say, a mensch.

Raised in the United Church, Winnipeg journalist Alison Gillmor has been happily married to a nice Jewish guy for 17 years.