using etic and emic to justify guilt

So I can't go on our field trip since I'm volunteering at Boo at the Zoo on the same Saturday. At first I felt incredibly guilty about this since I was very much looking forward to the class field trips and I'm a bit of an over achiever/I hate missing out on class things. After reviewing our reading packet and thinking about the purpose of the class, it dawned on me that I don't HAVE to go on the field trip! Okay Nathan, don't kill me yet...just humor me a little here.

One of my goals in this course is to expose myself to new and unfamiliar religions and beliefs. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding the etic/emic business here, but I think that what I want to be (or, more accurately, what I must be) an etic observer of these religions. I want to look at them through fresh lenses and appreciate the traditions as more than just alien traditions that I read about in a text book a few semesters ago.

For me, as a Jew, it will be impossible for me to be an etic observer. How am I supposed to sit in on Shabbat services on a Saturday morning and not follow along in the Hebre prayer book or even recite some of the liturgy? No matter what, I'm an emic observer just by nature of the fact that I grew up going to Shabbat services and no matter what my feelings are now I can't separate myself from that.

I'm not saying that I'm above going on the field trip or that it's not something that I want to do, I just think that I might have more of an etic experience at the Zoo working with children from the inner city who won't be able to go trick-or-treating in their neighborhoods on Halloween. Being from the suburbs and having always been able to go out in my neighborhood whenever I wanted this will be a new and different experience for me and I will be something of a culturally neutral observer.

Of course, I've only read the article once so far so I could be totally off base here. Nathan, please don't fail me for this.