cimorene

Since I learned to say "Jewish" in Finnish (several years ago) I've been waiting for an opportunity to try it on door-to-doorers and see how well it works. I think Jehovah's Witnesses are actually supposed to preach to everybody, but there are so few Jews in Finland that in my experience in general Finns seem so flabbergasted by the idea that I was thinking it would probably be effective. And it was!

Once I realized they were Jehovah's Witnesses, that is. My Finnish is not up to actually reading what the pamphlet they handed me said. The lead JH tried to show me their spiel in Russian too! Hahah. It can't be my last name, which is Polish and German, so he probably thought I looked Russian, which is funny to me although

waxjism says I do look a little bit Russian. Slavic, I guess, although to me it's more Polish.

But anyway, once he found the English language page I smiled regretfully but brightly and said earnestly, "Thanks, but I'm Jewish."

Then I watched as he and his partner blinked, he took a step back and said "Uh, okay" and I closed the door.

[sparkle] SUCCESS~~! [/sparkle]

(Brother in Law says "Thanks but I worship Satan" is also quite effective, although I've heard that "Thanks but I'm an atheist" doesn't have the same power. Wondering now about Cthulhu and the Spaghetti Monster. Or what do you think happens if Mormons try to convert Jehovah's Witnesses or vice versa???)

(Mmmmh, now I want spaghetti.)

Then I read the Wiki article on JH for the first time and discovered that they actually believe we are in the middle of the apocalypse, and that since October 1917 or something like that the world has been ruled in a global conspiracy by Satan and his demons, who were only kicked out of heaven at that point when Jesus took over. (They also don't believe Jesus is God incarnate, though, just his [sole] offspring.) Basically it sounds a bit like Supernatural since the Advent of Misha Collins. So... now I know that.