Often, the wittiest anecdotes to Modern Orthodox life come when we attempt merging those two seemingly discordant modes that define us: the “modern” and the “Orthodox.”

A lawyer friend invited me to a firm reception, hosted in a posh East Village club. Never one to turn down cheap eats I happily accepted. And, so, our heroine found herself spending yesterday evening with the crè­¥ of America’s fledgling legal elite–shaking a few hands, sharing a few ambulance jokes, and wholly indistinguishable from the rest of the crowd except for her rather apparent lack of exposed cleavage (which I’m convinced at least one partner picked up on) and the blue kippah srugya perched neatly atop her friend’s head.

Then came dinner. Prime rib for one hundred and fifty and shrink-wrapped Abigael’s for two. After freeing the pre-packaged food from its cellophane prison, with more than a little help from a handily toiveled Swiss Army knife, our heroine committed, for her companion’s amusement, the supposedly grievous sin of consuming sushi and chicken in the same forkful. When he ran off promptly thereafter, I figured that witnessing my brazen lack of chumra?dik-ness had sent his nerves into a tail dive.

Lo and behold, he reemerged moments later with the greatest find I’ve ever seen in a treyf joint, an unopened, yes, unopened
bottle of kosher wine. (Perhaps he hoped that liquoring me up might prevent future violations of presumed halakhah.) Only problem was, his trusty Swiss Army knife didn?t have a corkscrew.

I made for the bar, hoping to swipe one off a waiter. The ensuing dialogue:

Waiter: “Why do you need it?”
Heroine: “To open our wine.” (points to table and thinks “duh”)
Waiter: “Yeah, I offered to open it but the guy flat-out refused.”
Heroine: “Well, you know, we wanted to do it ourselves. The thrill of the hunt.”

I smiled a secret smile to myself as I went back to our table, where I proceeded to get horrifically tipsy on the finest Rashi’s got to offer.