AUGUSTA, GA - Benyamin Cohen woke up one morning and went to church. Around here that’s not an odd statement, except that Cohen is an Orthodox Jew, which means, technically, he’s not allowed.

That’s the gist of “My Jesus Year,” Cohen’s new book about his year spent visiting different Christian churches in the Bible Belt.

In comparison to any Christian child’s upbringing, Cohen explains, he grew up in an extremely ascetic religion. He dutifully ate kosher and observed holidays where activities like using electricity were off limits.

This legalistic lifestyle, in which he had to repeat hundreds of daily prayers for the most mundane activities — going so far as to thank God for making holes in his body so he could relieve himself — apparently led him to seek inspiration in church. With a rabbi’s permission, of course.

Cohen’s journey really covers the gamut of strange Christianity, though, for most readers in the Bible Belt, his mega-church circuit won’t shock you. Although, his embarrassing experiences will make you laugh out loud. At his first mega-church, he finds himself the unwitting poster boy for all Jews when his face is emblazoned on the JumboTron for the whole 10,000-member arena to gawk at.

For me, the more bizarre manifestations of Christianity were most interesting. In Atlanta, he visits the underground compound of the African Hebrew Israelites, a group formed during the Civil Rights movement. The group blends Judaism and Christianity but also practices the polygamy of Islam. Then he attends an extreme Christian wrestling match in rural Georgia, where men in tights wrestle in a sweaty symbolic struggle against evil.

He delves into commercial Christianity, and talks about its more bizarre manifestations.

He mentions the Power Team, a traveling Christian bodybuilder act. The men explode rubber balls with lung power and break concrete slabs over men sandwiched between boards of nails, presumably symbolic of the nails on the cross.

I actually saw this act in third grade. I don’t remember anyone converting. I think we were too mesmerized by the quivering thigh muscles and spandex tights.

Cohen even hits close to home when he mentions Augusta’s Stevens Creek Church for installing an ATM, Automated Tithing Machine.

For those uninitiated, (read non-Christian readers), his book might seem like an exposé of fundamentalist Christianity. However, it’s not a gimmicky, poke-fun-of-holy-rollers, free for all. I found myself mostly agreeing with him. “Yeah, Christians do some unexplainable things.”

Plus, he tempers his hilarious sarcasm with Jewish deprecation. At one point, he succinctly sums up all Jewish celebrations: God sent someone to persecute us, God saved us, let’s eat. Actually, I learned more about Orthodox Judaism than I ever thought I would. At the end of his journey (plot spoiler coming), the passion for Jesus Cohen sees in the churches inspires him to be a better Jew. Ahhh, the irony.

And I think this book will certainly inspire you, too. By the third page he had me already pondering what it means to practice my faith. That, I think, was his point in the first place.