Unlike several friends who have jumped into blogging with insightful posts every day, I am having a hard time actually sitting down to write. But I wanted to give an update on my accidental experiment into not dealing with religion at work.
Even before I was Torah-observant, I always had a deep sense of my Jewish identity and was often in a position to emphasize it. I always wrote about Jewish topics for history class, and kept a very basic standard of kashrut that led me to openly not eat certain things at school or social events. I stopped eating red meat when I went to a ranch camp where they killed the cows on-site, and continued this new stringency until I got to the kosher cafeteria in college and hated the dairy meals.
Since I was already observant when I entered the working world, I found that I had to bring up early Fridays immediately. So I was pretty open in general about kashrut, holidays, even davening.
In Ohio, Shabbos in the summer doesn't start until after 8:00, and the earliest it starts in the winter is around 4:30. Pesach is over, Shavuos only uses one weekday, and then the only holiday we need off the rest of this year is Yom Kippur. So there was absolutely no reason why I had to bring up early Fridays, and therefore I started the job without anyone knowing my religious business. And I found, quite by accident, that I kind of enjoyed this! I am not actively hiding anything - and certainly not violating any halacha - but I am not putting my beliefs out there or making an issue of kashrut.
I will continue this tomorrow hopefully as there have been some interesting results.
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What's interesting though is that even in our "separation of church and state" society (BS in a Bush regime), religious identity can inevitably creep up when you least expect it. [Sudden need for a day off, explanation for not partaking in the pepperoni pizza...] I can't relate because all my co-workers are Jewish (a requirement in my job), but until this year, I was the "token" frummie.
The nice thing about being a frum woman, though, is that it takes longer to be found out. A man, al yad sheni, can be discovered if he wears a kipa and tzitzit...ah, the ease of being eeshah!
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