Well, I’m learning a lot about banking, IDs, and social security. And I’ve never been between a conservative commercial bank and a conservative religious order.

As always, nothing is simple when Amish faith and tradition are involved.

I  feel like a banana about to be dropped in a blender.

One place you don’t want to be with the Amish is between them and their history. First off, the Amish are not one thing but many. Thousands of Amish are buying trucks, using cell phones, watching TV – and happily opening bank accounts.

On the outside, we of little or less faith see all sorts of ways around roadblocks. The Amish only see one – how does any decision relate to Jesus and the life he lived.

Moise’s sect – he calls it Old Amish – are unyielding about doing any of those these things that involved asking the government for something.. They never have, and they never will.

One of the Old Amish laws is to have no contact or connection with the Social Security Administration, ever.

My lawyer and I got excited when she learned that the SSA created a special exemption for Amish families who didn’t want to get a social security number.

They could ask for and receive a special number that served as an ID, just as if they did have the regular social security number necessary to start a bank account.

The issue isn’t really that everyone needed a social security number to open a bank account, the real issue is that banks needed some sort of ID or control number in order to agree to open an account.

So the agency agreed to give the Amish their own ID numbers, which were just as good as SSA numbers.

Many Amish have taken advantage of that option, Moise and Jacob will not be among them.

“We don’t do that,” which is, for them, the end of the story, the kiss of death. And they could care less what the fancy pants Amish in Lancaster are doing. They all have cell phones, TV, and bank accounts.

My heart sank for a bit there, but then I rallied. The lawyer wasn’t nearly done, and neither am I. We’ll do our homework, research the best options, and present them. After that, it’s literally in the hands of God.

Back to work. My new lawyer and I share a certain single-mindedness.

I somewhat foolishly wondered if there was a Bishop or higher authority in the Amish Church that they could appeal to. But then I remembered there are no appeals or arguments within the Amish Church. There is only the way they have always done it. There is only the way the Bible dictated it. There is only the way Jesus lived.

No one seemed inclined to try to ask him.

My lawyer thinks it’s possible that a commercial bank might accept the ID number of a deed or business transaction Moise and Jacob are looking through their papers to see if they have such a number.

The lawyer is calling the deed and banking people who presided over the transfer of property to Moise and Jacob when they bought their farms.

This might mean they have an ID already assigned to them, whether they realized it or not, not a new one they need to seek from the federal government.

We’ll see. There are many, many things the Amish won’t do and have never done. My lawyer and I have listed about 20 ways we think might lead the Amish to a local bank account. The number is dropping quickly.

Tomorrow the lawyer is meeting with banking officials to see if there might be some way through this from their perspective. Both Jacob and Moise have cautioned me and my attorney that they don’t want to pressure the bank into doing anything they don’t wish to do, they are not interested in a confrontation.

They would rather simply suffer than do that.

I said I really doubted that a commercial bank would be pressured into doing anything they didn’t want to do unless, of course,  you’re Donald Trump.

My lawyer is smart, focused, and experienced. She’s going to keep looking, I’m going to keep researching. If the solution is to get the Amish to get an ID from the Social Security Administration, I’d say forget it.

If they had already been assigned a tax or real estate number from previous dealings, and a bank would accept a number from that transaction, then it might be possible.

I am hopeful, optimistic. These are the kind of customers banks love – law-abiding, enterprising, successful. And they eagerly want local bank accounts. Usually, in my life, this would mean the chances of an agreement would be excellent.

But this isn’t my life, it’s somebody else’s life, and their l lives have little or no relationship with mine. If it simply doesn’t fit in with their beliefs, then I’m done. But I’m not there yet, neither are they.

Tomorrow Moise returns from a trip away. He’ll talk to me, meet with Jacob and make a decision; whether to take it farther or drop it. Either way, this will take a while. I hope the lawyer loves tomatoes.

We’ll see.

(Photo: Moise and his fellow church members worked hard all week to build a barn for his daughter Katie Ann and her husband Eli. They are going to be living in this building and working out of at least until sometime next year, where they will be building a new home with the help of many friends and fellow church members. They invited me over for a tour tonight, and it was beautiful.)