My brother is brainwashed.

I just got a call from my brother E, who is in Israel. This is the first time in his life he has ever called me. And he called from Israel.

What was so important you may ask? That was my question too...was something on his mind? Why was he calling me for the first time from a different country? (and he's coming back next week, it's not like he's going to be there all year).

He started going on about how he went to a lecture with a very important rabbi, and was talking to the rabbi afterwards about me. And the rabbi said something that he had to tell me, and he didn't want to tell me, cause he thought it would make me very mad, etc. etc.

Of course I thought that the Rabbi had told him that he couldn't ever talk to me again. So I get all nervous as I hate confrontation.

Then more preamble: He wants to tell me this thing the rabbi said, but I have to agree to listen to all of it first and try not to get mad. He wants to tell me 2 things first: 1. My parents did not put him up to this, and he never talked to them about me at all and 2. That he didn't want to make me mad, but he felt that he had to tell me this, even though he didn't want to.

And what did this Rabbi say that was so important my little brother called me for the first time ever, from a different country?

The Rabbi said that one of three things will happen with me and B. Either B will fully convert to Judiasm, or we will break up, or B will die within a year.

Let me repeat that. A big fancy Rabbi in Israel told my little brother that unless his big sister's fiance converts or breaks up with his sister, his sister's fiance will die within a year.

I shit you not.

So which is worse: That the rabbi said this, or that my brother, who I like to think is an intelligent human being, believed it enough to call me (long distance) for the first time evar?

I wonder if when we still get marred, B doesn't convert, and he doesn't die in a year...will my brother finally realize that these rabbis he so blindly follows are full of shit?

My response you ask? I burst out laughing when he said that, since I thought it was going to be a him-cutting-me-off speech and it took me completely off guard. And I tried to calmly explain to him that it didn't make me mad, because I didn't believe that he would know that, cause how could he know that? If I told him that unless he converted to atheism he would die within a year, he would laugh at me too because how would I know that either? And that while I completely am ok with him being religious if that's what he wants to do, that I don't think religion is for me.

And then he asked me about other stuff going on in my life. I told him about trying to adopt a dog (we filled out another dog application today for a basset hound rescue place, although we haven't completely given up on the other dog and will call them again tomorrow). He asked what I would do with my cats, since he thinks cats and dogs are natural enemies. I explained that that's not true, plenty of dogs get along with cats, we're just going to try and specifically look for one that does. I asked him about what it's like staying in Israel during the war, and he tells me that there are soldiers everywhere, but that no one would ever send a missile to the old city, where he is staying. I hope he's right. He comes back next week, and I told him to be safe. It was a pretty awkward, but overall not horrible conversation.

Eerily, and I never noticed this before (probably because we never talked on the phone before), my brother on the phone sounds a LOT like my dad on the phone. Like, not the way he speaks (and I know it was my brother, cause he has a very different speech pattern than my dad). But the voice is almost exactly the same. It definitely threw me off balance once or twice.