Update (4/4/11): You can now explore my annotated conversion reading list and find out what post-conversion Judaica I’m reading now by visiting my Goodreads profile. When you’re done here, I invite you to click through there!

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With my mikveh appointment less than three days away, I thought this would be a good time to share my conversion reading list. Considering how central study is to the Jewish faith, it shouldn’t be a surprise that study is a central part of a Jewish conversion journey. Ordinarily with Reform Judaism, conversion candidates attend a four-month Introduction to Judaism class and/or follow a reading list required by their rabbi–in addition to a year (more or less) of regular attendance at worship services, participation in congregational life, adoption of Jewish ritual and holiday observance, and regular meetings with their rabbi.

I followed a somewhat different path. On Thursday when I emerge from the mikveh, my journey from beginning to end will have lasted nine months. While I’m very involved in my synagogue (a regular worshipper, a member, and proposed for the board of our Brotherhood), my rabbi and I met only a handful of times. My favorite Orthodox blogger, Chaviva Galatz, once joked about me saying, “The neshama (spirit) is strong in this one!” I’d agree, and because of that, I created my own study list.

It was an easy thing to do. For the most part, I followed my nose to titles that I felt would satisfy whatever overwhelming, burning, yearning curiosities I had about my about-to-be-adopted faith at a given moment, as long as my overall selection of titles included fundamental Jewish learning and my rabbi and I felt like I was progressing or, better, applying what I was learning in real life.

Since September, I’ve read 28 Judaica (Jewish-themed) titles, or approximately 7,000 pages (and skimmed through several more.) Three of them–the top three–were transcendent works that I’d recommend to anyone considering joining the Jewish people. Only one I felt was little more than a waste of time. (Guess which one.) I’m a big believer in LMGTFY, so I’ll let you run your own Amazon searches for more information on these works, should you so desire.

However, if you’re a Chicago local like I am, know that I found–and checked out–every single title as a circulating book at the Chicago Public Library. Most of the titles I found at the main Harold Washington Library Center in the Chicago Loop. In fact, the Judaica section there is so large (picture a suburban supermarket aisle filled with Jewish books from one end to the other), I’ll continue to haunt it for years to come. Others I found in the small but strong Judaica section at CPL’s Sulzer Regional Library in the Lincoln Square neighborhood. Now on to the list, in semi-chronological order…

1. Why Be Jewish? (David J. Wolpe)
2. The Sabbath (Abraham Joshua Heschel)
3. Jewish Literacy: The Most Important Things to Know about the Jewish Religion, Its People and Its History (Joseph Telushkin)
4. God Was Not in the Fire (Daniel Gordis)
5. Nine Questions People Ask About Judaism (Dennis Prager & Joseph Telushkin)
6. Choosing a Jewish Life: A Handbook for People Converting to Judaism and for Their Family and Friends (Anita Diamant)
7. Embracing the Covenant: Converts to Judaism Talk About Why and How (Rabbi Allan L. Berkowitz and Patti Moskovitz)
8. Every Person’s Guide to Judaism (Stephen J. Einstein and Lydia Kukoff)
9. The Jewish Home: A Guide for Jewish Living (Daniel B. Syme)
10. American Reform Judaism: An Introduction (Dana Evan Kaplan)
11. Nothing Sacred: The Truth About Judaism (Douglas Rushkoff)
12. For Those Who Can’t Believe: Overcoming Obstacles to Faith (Harold Schulweis)
13. Judaism in America (Marc Lee Raphael)
14. The New American Judaism (Rabbi Dr. Arthur Blecher)
15. Entering Jewish Prayer: A Guide to Personal Devotion and the Worship Service (Reuven Hammer)
16. Hillel: If Not Now, When? (Joseph Telushkin)
17. On Judaism (Martin Buber)
18. Jewish Living: A Guide to Contemporary Reform Practice (Mark Washofsky)
19. Jewish with Feeling: A Guide to Meaningful Jewish Practice (Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi)
20. Chanukah: Eight Nights of Light, Eight Gifts for the Soul (Shimon Apisdorf)
21. Every Person’s Guide to Purim (Ronald H. Isaacs)
22. Kosher Nation (Sue Fishkoff)
23. God Was in this Place & I, I Did Not Know (Lawrence Kushner)
24. Make Your Own Passover Seder (Rabbi Alan Kay & Jo Kay)
25. Taking Judaism Personally: Creating a Meaningful Spiritual Life (Judy Petsonk)
26. Service of the Heart (Evelyn Garfiel)
27. Witnesses to the One: The Spiritual History of the Sh’ma (Rabbi Joseph B. Meszler)
28. The Synagogue in America: A Short History (Marc Raphael)

And counting.

(Photo: Wuzzles in the wild...Wall art inside Cincinnati’s Museum Center at Union Terminal.)

On a walk along Wabash one bone-chilling day
My suburban friend, Val, had something say:

“You can’t tell the story, you can’t tell, you can’t–
My nieces might read this, their parents will rant.
If you do, change the names of people and places,
Using a pseudonym leaves fewer traces.”

“Most of all, please make it fit for young readers,
My sister has standards, I beg that you meet hers.
Under no circumstance unveil the puzzle–
The item I sought to buy? Call it the wuzzle.”

Five years and twenty have passed since it happened
Suburban Val found herself rubbed on the back end,
Never expecting the unforeseen nuzzle
While harmlessly out on the hunt for a wuzzle.

Now wuzzles are funny, as older girls know
They don’t like to sled with you out in the snow.
They don’t like the sunlight, they don’t like the rain
You wouldn’t take one out to play on the train.

They won’t be caught romping in summertime flowers
Instead they’ll befriend you at undisturbed hours.
Their rubbery wubbery wobbly kisses
Are sought after widely by legions of misses.

But where’s a girl coming of age in the sticks
Supposed to find wuzzly buzzly kicks?
Where can you find one? Where do they roam?
How do you go about coaxing one home?

You go to the forest where wuzzles are born
Amid renty-blue flickies and wee-gamer sporn.
You don’t tell a soul of your wuzzly bid
But you go there, and quickly–that’s just what Val did.

As she entered the glade, she was swiftly perplected–
It wasn’t exactly as she had expected.
For one, it was dirty, for two, it was dim
And all of the people there looked rather grim.

She averted her eyes, she avoided their gaze
And made for a tree hidden half in the haze,
When what to her down-looking eyes should appear
But a sad little wuzzle, shedding a tear.

“Oh, why are you crying, dear wuzzle?” asked Val.
“If I can do something to help you, I shall.”
“Yes, please,” moaned the wuzzle, “please do so with haste,
My batteries are dying, they must be replaced!”

Now there’s nothing as woeful, as jolly decreased
As seeing a wuzzle becoming deceased.
Thusly moved by its plight, Val picked up the poor creature
Gave it a kiss and examined each feature.

“I’ll take you back home and I’ll wash you up neat,
Then you and I both will be in for a treat!
We’ll play in my nuzzle patch, just you and me
We’ll play there together, we’ll play there, you’ll see!”

“Say, you’ll need a name as would any new wuzzle…”
Val thought for a minute, “I christen you: Buzzle!”
Replied our faint hero, “Now please help me work,”
So Val cuddled him closer and made for the clerk.

But before she could get there, she suffered a bump
A thumpety-rub smack dab right on her rump.
And turning around to see what was the nuzzle
She came face to face with an odd fellow’s kluzzle.

She cried out in fright–she was not to be blamed
Then after she gathered herself she exclaimed:
“Dear sir, I’ve no interest to rub on your kluzzle,
My heart now belongs to my buzzery wuzzle.”

Val ran away quick from that nasty old grinder
In hope Mister Nuzzle was nowhere behind her.
But fleeing one frying pan into one newer
She met with a floozie who thought that she knew her.

A floozie it was, a floozie indeed
But not of the typical amateur breed.
From the tip of her tat to the breadth of her poozie
As floozie-floos go, this one was a doozie.

“I’m Madam Gadunk-Gadunk,” floozie professed,
“The last time you saw me I wasn’t quite dressed.
Apologies due for that day’s tardy session,
Shared space has its snags in our chosen profession.”

“Now what are you talking? Now what did you say?”
Val asked as she felt herself inching away.
“I’m not your old roommate, no we’ve never met.
You naked is something I wouldn’t forget.”

“Now please let me by, I really must hurry–
My wuzzle is wheezing, I’m starting to worry.”
As Val hastened past, she heard an alarm
And watched Gadunk carted off by the gendarmes.

She looked down at Buzzle, held tight in her hand
And told him, “Today’s going not as I planned!
I wanted a wuzzle, but not all this hassle–
This hassily, wassily, whissily-wassle!”

“Now let’s get you fixed and get out of this glade,
My patience is weakening, my temper is frayed.
Who knew nabbing wuzzles was difficult work?”
Luckily that’s just when Val spotted the clerk.

She slid up to the counter and laid Buzzle down
Got hold of the clerk, and said with a frown,
“My wuzzle is wheezing, he’s almost a goner.
Can you fix him up? Will you do me the honor?”

And that’s when the clerk got a mischievous grin.
“I think he needs D-cells, here I’ll put them in.”
“I’ll do it,” said Val, “if you merely provide them.
I’ve had a long day. Now where do you hide them?”

But quick as a wink and before she could flee
The clerk snatched away Buzzle with obvious glee,
And giving a flash of his lecherous smile
Inserted the batteries and turned up the dial.

Now what he did next you’d never suppose–
He shook the poor wuzzle in front of her nose!
Then asked in a voice that was needlessly gruff:
“Is this wuzzle’s rub-buzzery buzzling enough?”

“Why I never!” said Val. “Never did I suspect
A buzz-wuzzle salesman to be so direct!”
She tossed him a twenty and gave him a smack,
Ran off with dear Buzzle and never looked back.

Now many years later and half-again older
Suburban Val hasn’t grown markedly bolder.
“The fright that he gave me can do without topping,
Forevermore I’ll stick to Internet shopping!”

“The prices are cheaper there, no one’s a tease,
And two-for-one sales make me weak at the knees.”
The moral’s as plain as a pat on the tush:
A wuzzle in hand is worth two in the bush.

(Photo: You never know where life will take you. Credit: Devyn Caldwell.)

The new Huffington Post Chicago page debuts today.  And guess which Windy City carless blogger has got a byline there?

Last month, Huffington Post’s Chicago editor asked me to be a part of the widely read political news and blogging site’s local debut by joining their invitation-only stable of bloggers.  Instead of yes, I believe my answer was, “How high?”

In June, Ariana Huffington, the “progressive populist” co-founder of her namesake website, announced HuffPo was going to compete with local media in cities across the country by rolling out local sites with a robust mix of regional content including community and business news, sports, and the arts.

The Huffington Post Chicago page kicking off today is the first of what is planned to be “dozens” of locally branded pages, each following HuffPo’s national model of offering aggregated news feeds and original content from reporters and bloggers.

I’m thrilled to be one of those bloggers.  Starting today, you can find more of my words under my Huffington Post byline, where I’ll concentrate on larger issues important to Windy Citizens.  I invite you to come on over, say hi, and look around a bit.

The ongoing journal of my unending love affair with Chicago will, of course, remain right here where it belongs, in the put-your-feet-up, popcorn-worthy virtual pages of CHICAGO CARLESS.

On a deeper note, lately I’ve felt a bit overwhelmed at the renewed attention my blog has received since this summer’s overhaul. I’ve always known I’ve had an audience.  Lately I’ve come to realize, despite what I might want to believe, this blog’s growing web traffic is not due to visits from Google indexing robots and people stealing my images to use as their MySpace avatars.

Instead, CARLESS is developing a real community of readers, and a far-flung one, at that (if recent mail from California, Texas, and Ireland is any indication).  In September 2006, when this blog single-handedly launched me into a new career as a communications strategist, I similarly wondered whether I was prepared for the ride.

Back then, I penned Fear of Falling to express how I felt about the newfound wonder of my journey. It remains the most personally meaningful essay I’ve ever written in these pages and I encourage you to read it.  It sums up the confusion I sometimes feel about putting my words–and my heart–in front of you on a regular basis.

Two years later, I think it’s finally time to let myself acknowledge the fact that I know what I’m doing here. As it turns out, I’m a damned good blogger. To those of you who enjoy my words, I am grateful. It’s a pleasure to write them.

And an honor to know you find meaning in them.

(Photo: You never know where life will take you. Credit: Looper.)

Walking out my front door and into the remains of a bank robbery this evening brought to mind the absurdity of life. Never knowing where it’ll take you, it’s always best to be prepared for any eventuality. This eventuality brought six police cars, two paddy wagons, and an undercover police taxi to the foot of Marina City to arrest a pathetic-looking homeless man who had just robbed the Chase Bank beneath the House of Blues Hotel. Tried to rob, anyway.

Bystanders told me he made it to the sidewalk, though from the look of him, I doubt he made it out of the bank. Given that most Chicago bank robbers make it at least to their getaway cars, I wondered how well this man had thought his plan through.

It’s the same thought I had last Friday, when the tornado sirens went off in downtown Chicago for the first time in 47 years. Despite the looming black sky rolling in from the west, Devyn was set on a trip to Office Depot. He’d make it there before it closed or die trying.

Which had the potential to happen, as I pointed out while we argued over the definition of “Tornado Warning”. It didn’t help matters that Devyn was at home in his low-rise Loop condo, while I, on the other end of the phone line, had a window seat to the approaching squall line from three-hundred and fifty feet in the air.

I won the argument. Not because Channel 7 said there might be a funnel cloud approaching the Loop. Not because the Weather Channel’s website gave a time, ten minutes away, for its potential arrival. But because in mid-sentence, the loudest siren I’ve ever heard in my life began to wail.

I believe Devyn’s next words were something to the effect of, “I think I’ll stay home, then.”

As you can imagine, New Yorkers like me don’t have much experience with tornado sirens. Apparently, neither do downtown Chicagoans. As I and dozens of my neighbors stood on our high-rise balconies and peered variously at the horizon and at each other for some sense of what to do, we knew standing on a concrete ledge glued to the side of a tower probably wasn’t the best place to ride out the storm.

But when you’re, say, 40 stories up in a building without much of a basement when the tornado sirens start to wail, really. At that point, what does it matter?

I told Devyn I loved him and hung up. Something said to head for an interior stairwell, once I could catch Camoes and thrust him headfirst into his carrier. Computer, carrier, backup. Phone, cell phone, wallet. Moving like. Chicken with. Head cut off. Everything important dragged into the bathroom, awaiting orders for the troop movement into hallway, then stairwell.

And then I gave up, accepted fate, and went back to the balcony. I saw the tallest, darkest clouds I’ve ever seen in my life envelop the Loop before a wall of water and wind devoured my view. And then the sirens stopped and it was over. All sound, little fury, no funnel, thank God.

The sky began to clear while I checked my pants for signs of damp. Devyn called back and told me he was finally headed out the door. Just so I wouldn’t worry.

I wish I’d been as prepared for my fate as my Korean friend, (I don’t frigging look like Margaret Cho) Rozella, the moment when she felt the parachute cords flop back onto her head. On her first ever–and now maybe final–tandem freefall, she felt her jump partner wriggling behind her, cutting away at something, working desperately.

The first moments of falling hadn’t been so bad. Just like a roller coaster for a few seconds, until you really get going. Then the wind pressure kicks in and it’s not like you’re moving at all, anymore. You watch the horizon. Gaze at clouds. Peek at the ground. View the parachutes of your Eugene college buddies who pressured you into this jump against your better wishes open, open, open, open, one after another. Wonder why the hell you’re still falling.

“Well, that explains it.”

As Intercontinental Ballistic ‘Zella hurtled back towards Oregon, a strange calm descended on her. “This is it,” she thought, “I’m dead. God has a sense of humor, and it’s a dark one.”

The humor wasn’t lost on her pals from the first jump who’d already made it back to terra firma. Looking up in unison at the potentially doomed pair, they shared a single thought: “Damn! Wouldn’t it be funny if that was Rozella? She didn’t even wanna be up there.”

While her jump partner struggled to free them of the failed ‘chute, Rozella let the calm overwhelm her. She thought of her parents. She giggled with God at the irony of her death. She reviewed the things she hadn’t yet done. Have a baby. Live in Europe. Get the cleaning back from-

OW! OW! GOD DAMN WHAT THE FUCK! An emergency ‘chute opening a few hundred feet above the ground leaves deep-tissue bruising under arms, on thighs, for weeks after.

Rozella handled it well, though. She’d been in the cross hairs of that dark sense of humor before. She knew God was playing. A test, to keep one’s head in a crisis. She passed. Best of all, her friends, in tears and in shock, and apologetic as anything for making her jump, were putty in her hand for the rest of the semester.

As she hobbled away from the landing site, she could hear another instructor ask her jump partner under his breath:

“What the hell happened to you up there?”

“…I have NO idea.”

* * *

It’s absurd to me to think that a blog I began barely a year ago to help me figure out my life has become something of a local newsmaker. I write what I see, and think, and feel about my downtown Chicago neighborhood because I deeply believe that downtown living still gets short shrift in this metropolis of leafy streets and backyard barbecues. I’m gratified my edgy take on my neighborhood and my life has resonance for some.

But I’m still trying to figure out whether I’m the writer that my friends keep telling me they see me becoming, or just another big-mouthed New Yorker. Those among you who just mouthed, “You’re both,” are the ones to whom I’ll probably owe steaks in the future.

Opportunities have arisen for me because of this blog that I never expected to happen. They keep happening. I have absolutely zero idea how to take it all in, but, what the heck, I’ll go with the flow. I’m nothing if not a media whore. But read my words or not, I’ll still be madly in love with downtown Chicago.

So to those groupies among you, and you know who you are, no flashbulbs, please. Hurts the eyes. I prefer a show of support in wine–a Portuguese vinho verde if you’ve got it. It helps keeps the performance anxiety at bay.

I promise not to over-imbibe, though. That just dulls the senses. And I don’t want to end up like Rozella’s jump partner.

Wherever my words take me, I want to be prepared for the ride.

(Photo: San Francisco’s little bookstore with a big effect.)

It’s been three years since I came to Chicago and I still haven’t figured out why I did it. I know the factors that pushed me away from New York (slimy employer, post-9/11 angst, hermetically self-encased friends) and that pulled to me to Chitown (aggressively amiable locals, tall buildings, and cheap rent). I know I had lessons to learn here. But I’ve never ever been able to identify the moment when the idea to actually tear myself away from NYC and move across country to the “for Chrissakes, Michael, what are you thinking, it’s the” Midwest actually happened. One day I knew the decision had been made and, utterly, I no longer had a choice in the matter. But I just don’t remember ever making the decision, itself.

Visiting San Francisco last month just made matters worse. Besides not knowing why exactly I came here, now I want to go there. With the same unplaceable vigor that I wanted to come here. So before I jump civic ship again, I think it’s time for me to explore how a Brooklyn boy ended up living in the City in a Cornfield in the first place. Oddly enough, San Francisco made for a good place to start that quest.

No fan of stereotypes, in my pre-trip research (think about it — you’re suprised an anal-retentive urban planner would do pre-trip research for a pleasure trip?) I was drawn, regardless, like a moth to the flame of the writing of Jack Kerouac and his unfinished quest to understand his own particular wanderlust. On the Road, several visits to former Beat-haunt City Lights bookshop, and a healthy dose of Wikipedia later, I put myself on a reading list. Kind of like a crash-diet for the psyche.

For a few weeks now I’ve been clinically (being anal-retentive after all) wading through my self-imposed list of modernist and post-modern memoirs and novels. At half price — speaking as a former Border’s junkie, I am amazed at the number and quality of Chitown’s used bookshops, but save that for another post.

I feel I need to know how others approached their journeys to help me get a handle on mine. And I know I’ll need to write about mine, too. I don’t know how, or where (journal, monologue, book, blog), but it’s bubbling just under and I know, much as I knew it was time to come to Chicago, that it’s time to do this, too.

What I don’t know is what will come of it. I hope at least for a slightly more defined clarity about why I trekked west. All I’m fairly sure of is that, unlike the plays I wrote in college, the central character of this work won’t be a transvestite prostitute selling ice-cream from a live-in Winnebago parked in the meat-packing district.

For now, I’m reading (or rereading), with my eyes wide open for once, the following rapidly expanding list:

William Faulkner — The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying
Ernest Hemingway — The Sun Also Rises
Jack Kerouac — On the Road, The Dharma Bums, Desolation Angels, The Subterraneans (so far)
Tom Robbins — Villa Incognito
Spalding Gray — Swimming to Cambodia, Gray’s Anatomy
David Sedaris — Naked
Augusten Burroughs — Running with Scissors

If anyone has any suggestions, I’d be glad to hear them.

More to come…