unrecognizable as a sacred blessing. AITAH?

During the Birkat Kohanim at my new Reform shul to close out the kabalat shabbat service, people sitting next to each other grab each other and have a little feel while the rabbis and the cantor sing some kind of Joni Mitchell version of the blessing from the bimah.

There’s no consent given or received, the expectation is that you just wrap your arms around whoever the heck is sitting next to you. I’m male, 46, unmarried. Last week that happened to be a 30-something married Christian woman [redacted info about why she was there to allow the bot to allow me to post]. She sat down next to me because I guess she perceived some connection (before I knew she was neither Jewish, nor single) at the previous oneg, and her usual oneg-mates (a trans woman, and another christian) weren’t there.

The first time I was at the congregation it was the a plump divorced administrator from the shul who grabbed me, literally with almost zero warning.

I don’t go to shul for physical contact, especially not without my consent.

I’m kind of illiterate when it comes to liturgy. I know to cover my eyes and pronounce the last ‘d’ for the Shma, I know the words and the tune for Oseh Shalom, and V’shamru. I’ve been to two months worth of Ulpan in Israel. I did not however identify this f*ked up kumbaya moment as a sacred blessing.

So when I emailed the rabbi my objection, she didn’t honor my objection around the consent violation, she basically just chastised me for calling the BK a “kumbaya moment”. I get where she is coming from, and yet I still feel like the whole thing is jacked.

I guess this whole post is an AITAH post.