{"id":26737,"date":"2010-12-18T18:10:50","date_gmt":"2010-12-19T02:10:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=26737"},"modified":"2010-12-18T18:10:50","modified_gmt":"2010-12-19T02:10:50","slug":"amy-klein-gets-a-blessing-to-marry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=26737","title":{"rendered":"Amy Klein Gets A Blessing To Marry"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><A HREF=\"http:\/\/www.lukeford.net\/profiles\/profiles\/amy_klein.htm\">Amy Klein<\/a> (<A HREF=\"http:\/\/amyklein.net\">AmyKlein.net<\/a>) <A HREF=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2010\/12\/19\/fashion\/19MODERN.html?_r=1&#038;ref=modernlove\">writes in the New York Times Modern Love column<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p>But the summer I turned 38, I freaked out about the approaching Four Zero \u2014 which was old even for the nonreligious world \u2014 so I went to Israel, where I had lived in my 20s, to visit old friends and figure out where my life had gone wrong. On my last day there I ran into the mother and father of my best friend from high school. Without prompting, my friend\u2019s mother insisted I go see the rabbi she\u2019d entrusted with such weighty matters.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe told me exactly when both my daughters would get married,\u201d she gushed, writing down the phone number on my newspaper. \u201cHe also saved my husband from death,\u201d she added, gesturing at him.<\/p>\n<p>As she told me the story of how doctors had given her husband only days to live until the rabbi prayed and cured him, the man himself \u2014 60-something and in seemingly good health \u2014 stood next to her, rolling his eyes and literally snorting in disbelief.<\/p>\n<p>He was like many Modern Orthodox people who consider themselves to be very grounded and rational (aside from the whole Creationism thing, the Moses-Parting-the-Red-Sea thing, and the God-Giving-the-Ten-Commandments-on-a-Mountain thing). They don\u2019t believe in anything bordering on the alternative, like kabbalah, especially rabbis with supernatural powers.<\/p>\n<p>I might have stopped being Orthodox, but its indoctrination had left me with the sense that nearly anything \u2014 God, spiritualists, healers, psychics and witches \u2014 might be equally possible. Thus I found myself in an airless Jerusalem classroom with this old rabbi, who had a white beard so long I couldn\u2019t see his mouth and glasses so thick I couldn\u2019t see his eyes. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Amy Klein (AmyKlein.net) writes in the New York Times Modern Love column: But the summer I turned 38, I freaked out about the approaching Four Zero \u2014 which was old even for the nonreligious world \u2014 so I went to &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=26737\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[29789,3783,24614,24616,24617,24615],"class_list":["post-26737","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-amy-klein","tag-amy-klein","tag-indoctrination","tag-moses-parting-the-red-sea","tag-spiritualists","tag-supernatural-powers","tag-weighty-matters"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26737","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26737"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26737\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26738,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26737\/revisions\/26738"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}