In the story, Then You Will Know, by Moshe Schulman. Moshe goes into detail explaining his Jewish Orthodox faith he was brought up by. He describes how after following the rules for years and listening to his parents and rabbis his faith in his religion faded. Later he tells how he went to live with his aunt in Long Island who was nowhere near as religious as him and his family. The reason he lived with his aunt was that his parents were going through a terrible divorce and he did not want to be around either of his parents. After testing his luck with moving his yamaka forward on his head at school and listening to Howard Stern on the bus to school. He began to realize that God was not going to strike him down and that he could try new things without dying.

Concerning Down’s terms for analyzing rhetorical stories, I found that association, identification, and rhetorical ecology are in this story.

Firstly, association in terms for Moshe’s faith. When most people hear the word orthodox, it means a more refined strikers version of whatever subject is orthodox, here it is Judaism. When people see families or men walking on the street with larger hats, and all dressed in black, the women wearing wigs and long skirts. We associate that with the Orthodox Jewish faith, there are many groups within the Jewish faith, but being orthodox can at time be much easier to associate specific attributes to.

The second element is identification, for our author, Moshe, as a child be interpreted that if he did certain things in life God would ultimately kill him and he would not go to Heaven. This would scare anyone, that if you did something God would kill you and you would not get to have eternal life in Heaven, primarily as a child. Part of this interpretation was for life outside of his home; he was not allowed to associate with girls, watch television or another social activity that the orthodox faith believed to be sinful. Another example of this interpretation was for Moshe’s food. He was only allowed and think he could eat kosher foods. When he lived in his home with his parents, this was not an issue. However, now that he began living with his non religious aunt, there was little to no kosher food to be found in her house. When they ran out of the kosher food in the house, they went driving around looking for a place to eat or frozen meals to heat up. Concluding that there was no kosher food to be found, he was interested in trying food that was not. Terrified that God was going to kill his aunt, brother, and himself for even getting the food let alone actually teaching it. Throughout this experience of breaking his loyalty to only eating kosher foods, this was the first significant sept for him to leaving the Orthodox Jewish faith which he identified himself with so much for so long.

The last is the rhetorical ecology, being part of the orthodox faith it created a network of influences around the author and it affected how he lived his life. Later eventually making him leave that faith to follow much less strict confidence. During this period is where we see as the reader the identification of how God would kill him, or how strict the faith is in association and the use of kosher foods. As I interpret this story as the reader, I see that the Orthodox faith is not for the faint of heart. Seeing how Moshe goes through his story and explain how he thought he was going to die by a lightning strike in the street for eating a slice of pizza in ludacris, but it creates an interesting story rather than just saying how stricted his faith was while growing up.