I Will Celebrate By Accepting Your Sacrifice of Small Gifts and Candy

I have a meting tomorrow for this alternative comics fest here in Chicago that I'm helping plan because we meet on Tuesday nights and tomorrow we're settling on the place we're going to have the tabling at. One of my cohorts circulated a reminder e-mail to remind everybody about the importance of tomorrow's meeting. When I confirmed it was in my datebook, I couldn't help noticing in my datebook that tomorrow is also the Muslim holiday Eid-al-Adha that commemorates the willingness of Abraham sacrificing his son Ishmael as an act of obedience to God before God provided a ram to sacrifice instead. I recognized this story, because that's the story I read out of the Torah at my bat mitzvah as a Jewish pre-teen. And I got to thinking about the insanity of that story. What kind of story is that to read at a coming of age ceremony?! How is that helpful?! That if you lay down your life for God he'll give you a ram and then ask you to kill it? WTF, God?

What I would really like is if at someone's bar or bat mitzvah they were all, "You know what? Now that I'm considered an adult I would just ike to say, I think Judiasm is bullshit. But I will take any gifts or money that you can give me for turning 13. Also, please sign the enlarged picture of me in my soccer uniform. Diyanu!"

However, in honor of the holiday, I said that I would only come to the meeting if someone sacrificed something to me. I sent around an e-mail to the Google Group for the committee reminding everybody that I would accept candy, dollar bills, and other small gifts. I also said that people could come clean my house, which is also perfectly acceptable.

Mazol tov to me I am now a woman. Checks can be made out to "Liz Mason."