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I’m trying to start a haunted (i.e. outside) minyan for next Shabbat. Conveniently, a friend wrote me an email making an offhand comment about my patrilineal descent (something I’m already highly self-conscious about), and its effect on my minyan: “Either accept fate as a reform [Jew] whose lineage will die out with her and organize…

It was 2:00 AM and the joint was jumping. Men in suits bustled through the crowded street. Here and there, small pockets of girls were gathered as well. In the snippets of overheard conversations, I picked up Hebrew, Yiddish, and English. Everywhere, an overwhelming, unfamiliar, and putrid smell, the source of which was also the…