The Forever Mitzvah

	In Prospect Park, as in many other parts of New York City, you’ll sometimes come across Jewish men seeking Jewish men. These men belong to a sect that believes that it’s a mitzvah, a good deed, to get less observant Jews to put on tefillin, which are black leather boxes containing parchment inscribed with verses from the Torah. You wear one on your arm and one on your head — I think the last time I did this was during my bar mitzvah. They’ll go up to possibly Jewish men and ask, “Are you Jewish?” 
	Because I have a large, crooked nose, whenever I run in the park, these Jews home in on me like ducks chasing an anthropomorphic sack of bread crumbs. This triggers insecurities I thought I had conquered long ago. I’m otherwise over my nose. It was women I’d always been most concerned about, but over time I realized that some women — perverts — are into noses like mine, and others are willing to overlook it because I have developed so many other positive qualities, though I am precluded by space constraints from listing any of them here. Still, I don’t like thinking about my nose, and it’s hard to avoid doing so when the Jews of Prospect Park lock on to you like Yiddish-speaking Terminators. 
	One of these Jews, though — he was different from all the others. He approached me a couple times on my runs this past fall, and I ignored him but I also noticed him. What stood out, at first, was that his body seemed like it should be biomechanically impossible. He was six-foot-eight, easily, a buck fifty soaking wet. I immediately found myself relating to him, simply because of my own feelings about my own dumb body. It was also noteworthy to me that he was rolling solo, unlike most of the other Jews-seeking-Jews, who tended to run in packs.
	Even though he came across like a poorly drawn cartoon character trapped in a horribly misguided crossover episode, nothing seemed to faze him. He asked and asked and asked random male strangers if they were Jewish and was always rejected but always maintained a broad