Jewish Is Becoming
Kotz, Mary Lynn
JEWISH IS BECOMING MARY LYNN KOTZ Twenty years ago, in Washington, D.C., I made a commitment. I spoke the same words as did Ruth, the Moabite: Your people shall be my people, your God, my God. It...
...Ever since my childhood, I had known I was a Jew...
...By demonstrating our openness, by offering introduction-to-judaism classes to potential Jews by choice and to those simply seeking more information about Judaism, we will go a long way toward building bridges of understanding between us and those of other faiths...
...And so he did...
...Wednesday, prayer meeting...
...An introduction-to-judaism course is just that...
...I stood there Mary Lynn Kotz is the author of several books including Upstairs At the White House, A Passion for Equality: George Wiley and the Movement (with her husband Nick Kotz) and Marvella: A Personal Journey, as well as numerous magazine articles...
...I wasn't sure what I believed in and I felt, most of all, alone, alienated from my own history, from my family, from every single one of my friends and from all of my classmates...
...I felt lost and unsure...
...it is open to everyone...
...Pair them for one year with an adoptive Jewish family from the active temple membership...
...I think that the dictum, "Don't call attention to converts, don't set them apart," was and is a well-intentioned Jewish principle...
...Another woman's mother was a Christian, her father a Jew, and she had been raised as nothing...
...Others from the conference, going back to their synagogues to speak on the same subject, report that their congregations' response was identical...
...We all want to be accepted...
...She talked about her work in an interview in Reform Judaism, published by the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, in February, 1981...
...Their reasons were identical to mine, their enthusiasm and love for the religion beautiful to hear...
...At last I felt I had found what I had been looking for: here was what I believed...
...Some, like me, were introduced to the faith by a husband or wife who had been born a Jew...
...But not for long...
...Like our wedding, it was intimate, private...
...We were embraced...
...It's very scary...
...I had never seen him again...
...When Jews today say, "Jews don't seek out converts," they forget that it was only the crudest of repression that stopped the practice...
...And what an exciting intellectual and spiritual journey that was for me...
...And at the end of two months, we were part of the Des Moines Jewish community...
...I mentioned my dilemma to Mrs...
...Instead, to my delight, the response was overwhelmingly positive...
...Herewith, by permission, some excerpts...
...It is not intended to create a permanent culture of "convert," but to help the newcomer become comfortably settled...
...My Bible knowledge was definitely an advantage...
...It refers to my brothers, whom I love...
...and my Roman Catholic neighbors, who were also celebrating Good Friday that evening...
...Another theme began to emerge: "I felt so alone...
...The rabbi assigned me books to read, questioned me on what I read...
...And I can remember, as clearly as yesterday, the day I found out I wasn't Jewish...
...She was very interested in my problem and introduced me to her Reform rabbi...
...We want you to be part of us...
...I passed through Christianity, from the dogmatism of Catholicism to the completely undogmatic Quakerism, through atheism and agnosticism, meditation, and yoga, and still could not find a vehicle for religious expression...
...Being a convert I could, as the Halachah enjoins me, forsake my family, consider myself a "bat Avram avinu" and forget from whence I came...
...I later discovered that I was not alone: most people, including many Jews, think of Judaism as a closed society...
...Well, does a grown person need a religion if she can't fine one that fits...
...Above all, let's begin to talk about Judaism by choice...
...It was magnificent: incense, pomp, ceremony...
...Anyone to show me how to make challah...
...It is a support system that begins immediately upon conversion...
...a need to belong to a system that believes mankind has an obligation to improve itself...
...But for most the problems arise earlier...
...Despite the fact that as a deacon's daughter I thought I'd had an overdose, I felt a need, a need to worship...
...The reverence with which he accepted the obligations of Jewish manhood has bound him inextricably to our faith...
...know anybody else who had converted, I had no one with whom to share and compare experiences...
...The other day, a conversation between four women took place in my living room...
...And many were not accepted by the family of the spouse who was born a Jew...
...For the next six Saturday nights, each of those couples entertained for us, introducing us to still more of their friends...
...The major goal of UAHC's outreach effort is to try to find better ways of creating a system whereby new Jews can enter our community fully and positively...
...But when I am in my own home, I practice Judaism and am at peace with myself...
...For I was given that extra measure of love...
...I found myself at the head of the newly formed Jewish Students Organization at USF, raising money for Israel...
...While the war served to give me a real involvement with the Jewish community, until I moved to Los Angeles I really had no understanding of Judaism's familial aspect, or of the role of the culture aside from religion...
...another invited us to break the fast with them after High Holy Days...
...Until Mrs...
...One steeped in theology and piety is in a unique position to see the flaws in the fabric of religious faith and practice...
...My Baptist family went to four different church services on Sunday...
...Thursday, choir practice...
...By the time I was 18 and beginning my second year at the Jesuit-run University of San Francisco, I could no longer stand during the mass and in good conscience recite the Nicene creed...
...A couple from Temple B'nai Jeshurun gave a dinner party for us, and invited six other couples...
...In Los Angeles, I enrolled in what was then the Yeshiva Teachers College...
...We who choose Judaism were called "those who seek shelter under the shade of God...
...These friends will never know the strength and comfort that they gave me by drawing me in to Jewish participation...
...And there are a number of ways in which congregations can help...
...Still, there were a number of post-conversion questions and insecurities that confused and bewildered me...
...Her story appeared in the December issues of Direction, published by the University of Judaism (the west coast affiliate of the Jewish Theological Seminary) in Los Angeles...
...We want you to be a functioning Jew...
...I think we should make information about Judaism accessible in as non-threatening and non-coercive a setting as possible...
...Perhaps Jews by accident of birth do not think of Jewishness as a process of learning—of beginning—but it is...
...My mother, who had a Jewish grandfather amidst her scores of Catholic ancestors, believes that since I was born on his birthday, it was somehow meant to be...
...Since I didn't Lydia Kukoff, coordinator of Jews by Choice: The First Years, and program consultant for the Task Force on Reform Jewish Outreach, holds an MA in Judaic Studies from Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, Los Angeles, and is herself a Jew by choice...
...There is a lesser known counsel offered by Maimonides that says that once the convert becomes a Jew, the conversion should never again be mentioned...
...How am I going to raise my children to be Jews and also to respect both families...
...I was a great favorite of my Greek professor at USF until I converted to Judaism...
...I was overcome by the beauty, the majesty, the humanity, the heritage in that music...
...In those days, there were fewer of us, and so the rabbi and I had nearly a month together, one-on-one...
...It was like coming home...
...This intermediary step helps to encourage a lifetime of Jewish identity and involvement...
...that we have a commitment to help those who are less fortunate than ourselves...
...Many born Jews don't realize how difficult it is for outsiders to take that first step, to find the information, to ask how to do it...
...That is why the Jews by choice have been so insistent that an education program be set up, within the temple and within religious schools, to teach the Jews by birth something of the traditional positive Jewish attitude toward the convert...
...These conferences, in the form of "Outreach Weekends," give Jews by choice an opportunity to speak out to each other, to offer sharing and support—as well as ideas for involving us more deeply in Jewish life...
...You continue to be called a convert by many Jews...
...As voiced by the group of Jews by choice in New York and borne out by statistical studies conducted by the UAHC, the most far-reaching and difficult problem the Jew by choice must face is the second-class status he or she is often accorded by the Jewish community—the fact that many born Jews have trouble thinking of the convert as a "real" Jew...
...lYMAKUKOff • I had what might be described as an ideal conversion...
...He had been confirmed in Washington Hebrew Congregation, his parents were members there, and so I came to Washington and began my course of study with Rabbi Norman Gerstenfeld...
...Hearing for the first time the shofar blast out loud and clear on a September morning swept me with pride and recognition of my heritage, bringing to mind the prophet Joshua and the walls of Jericho...
...And that's too bad—not only because Judaism is such a rational, viable, sensible religion, but also because the seeds of anti-Semitism are often sown in feeling excluded...
...Surprisingly, my parents did not react very negatively...
...I was asked by the editor of the school paper to write an article explaining the Jewish side of the conflict...
...This was the word of Covenant, which binds me and my people to God...
...Some Jews by choice live a Jewish life for a long time before making the decision to undertake a formal conversion, and they, of course, have learned by doing...
...I didn't know anyone else felt that way...
...These weekends have become a very important inspirational experience...
...another invited my husband to work on the social action committee...
...Let's be honest, though...
...Can you imagine the thrill—as well as the sheer panic—of sitting down to my own table, to hold our first Seder...
...It implies an outsider, who can never become one of us...
...My conversion course had been on a cerebral plane...
...And how many times have I heard, from born Jews—whom my rabbi calls "Jews-by-chance"— "Why on earth would you want to become Jewish...
...But I knew nothing about contemporary Judaism...
...N But during the Crusades, and again beginning about the fifteenth century all over Europe, to seek converts became impossibly dangerous, and a new Jewish tradition was born—that of not reaching out...
...We spoke out about our reasons for choosing Judaism...
...Give the Jew by choice the option of a public conversion ceremony, witnessed by the entire congregation...
...And it occurs to me, based on my experience, that there may be a role for the Jew by choice in the revitali-zation of Judaism...
...Some of us were afraid to tell our families...
...These are just a few questions that concern Jews by choice, whose success as Jews frequently depends on how well they can resolve them...
...Where were Ezra and Joshua and Elijah and Gideon and Eli and Samuel...
...I was drawn to his religion, for reasons both different from and similar to those that drew me to him...
...My feelings of insecurity and guilt prevented me from consulting the rabbi...
...My background had prepared me for Judaism...
...The first verse of Leviticus is, "And God called Moses...
...The rabbis wrote, "Because the name 'Moses' was given to him by Pharoah's daughter, Batiyah, who became a convert...
...For the most part, I have followed that advice, but I cannot call myself Orthodox...
...On Yom Kippur, between the morning service and the memorial service, Washington Hebrew Congregation offers lay people an opportunity to speak to the congregation about personal religious experiences...
...We all want to be thought of as "no different...
...As a teenreaching out—the edict of Constantine, the Crusades, the Inquisition—non-Jews have come to feel that they are excluded, they they are not welcome...
...Still another invited us to share their seder, and gave me instructions the following year in preparing my own...
...You are seen as a religious fanatic by some, and by others as a talking dog: it doesn't matter what the dog says, the fact that it talks is amazing enough...
...Our wedding service was in our Washington temple, small, consecrated...
...The campuses were filled with rioting students and Vietnam Shohsana Lev came to Judaism from an intensely Catholic family...
...was dividing American society...
...One delightful young couple from Kentucky had "shopped around" for a religion, and after visiting several churches, wound up at a Reform temple...
...Actually, there were thirteen in, because as we talked, we discovered that our commitment had strengthened the commitment of our husbands...
...There was a friend, still raw from a recent divorce...
...One of the most meaningful services of my life was our son's bar mitzvah, in our home...
...twenty years ago, surrounded by two thousand people I did not know in Washington Hebrew Congregation, tears spilling from my eyes...
...We were drawn into the temple...
...Coming home...
...There was pain in our stories, too...
...For me, hearing for the first time the haunting music of the Kol Nidre, knowing that it was now a part of me forever, was a pinnacle moment in my life...
...I was crushed...
...Bloom offered her help, I had been firmly pushed away...
...He died last year...
...Not knowing the dreadful historical reasons for Jews not vert is like a new-born infant—an orphan who should be given an extra measure of love...
...My husband's uncle, who is Orthodox, officiated...
...It only occurred to me some years later it might be possible to enter Judaism through a less painful portal, with the aid of those who were already there...
...For we are potentially a mirror through which joy can be reflected to Jews who need a more positive view of Jewishness...
...Even in the fourth century, after the edit of Constantine proclaimed Christianity to be the official religion of the Roman Empire, Jews continued to reach out for converts—and to risk capital punishment...
...And finally, I earned the name Ruth...
...I learned about anti-Semitism and genocide...
...I spoke of the strength and beauty of Judaism, and what it had meant to my life—and that is the message people heard...
...When Nick Kotz and I met, we were both working in Des Moines, Iowa, far away from our homes and families...
...Those of us who are older in Judaism give confidence and reassurance to those who are brand-new...
...I am in favor of an open-door policy...
...My name was entered into the American Jewish archives in Cincinnati, and I began the process of becoming a Jew...
...At first, I wrestled with the restrictions of the Southern Baptist Church...
...What an experience it is to be a new Jew, as an adult—when one's sensitivity and awareness are fully developed...
...My father's hobby was Hebrew history...
...Everybody kept remarking, with some surprise, about the similarity of their feelings, saying "Yes, that happened to me...
...I think that there are many people to whom Judaism would be extremely attractive if they knew about it...
...I expected it to be a thorny subject, to engender a measure of hostility...
...I participated in the first national conference of Jews by choice, sponsored by the Task Force on Reform Jewish Outreach of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations and the Central Conference of American Rabbis...
...And we achieve greater clarity in defining our problems...
...I am a Jew...
...Until 1 went to law school, I had never attended a non-religious school...
...Why in the desert...
...One Orthodox rabbi who was my teacher collared me after class one night saying, "I understand you want to have a real conversion...
...My parents gave a reception for us, in Mississippi...
...When the flaws undermined the fabric of my Catholicism, I could not continue to be a practicing Catholic...
...The temple can be a frightening place to the stranger who fears being rejected out of hand...
...The other woman is Danish, and she had an Orthodox conversion, the only kind available in Denmark...
...If it seems as though a child is going to marry someone who is not Jewish, parents should encourage the young couple to investigate Judaism together and perhaps attend an introduction to Judaism class, if only for the sake of a shared understanding of one another...
...then, on Monday, there was Bible Study...
...Ultimately, it has to make us better—as Jews and as people...
...In our zeal to teach the philosophy, history, theology, ethics, holidays and rituals of Judaism, the very real emotional needs of Jews by choice are often neglected...
...Of all those ten, why did He call him Moses...
...I was embraced by my husband's father's family with a sweetness that was matched only by my family's embrace of my husband...
...This past spring, in New York, I had another thrilling experience as a Jew...
...He told me, "But surely you understand that only those who believe will enter the kingdom of heaven...
...They knew I was not rejecting the teachings of Jesus, for they knew those were Jewish teachings...
...One woman's parents were each what she described as "half Jewish," and the woman herself had been raised a Quaker...
...I go home for Christmas and downplay my Judaism around my family...
...The rabbis I spoke with were either too busy, uninterested, suspicious, or told me to settle my marital situation before they would convert me...
...And therefore, our work became rather like a thoughtful study of comparative religion—of history, of learning that the most positive aspects of Christianity, in which I believed, were the tenets not only of the ancient Judaism that Jesus taught, but also of practice in present-day Judaism...
...About rabbis who discouraged us at the outset...
...The prayers, the words that were said, made an impression on our son that will never leave him...
...Because I continue to love my family, I toe a fine line...
...Too often, however, it becomes an excuse for ignoring the very real needs of neophyte Jews...
...She has come to accept my religion although she is mystified by my religious practices...
...There is an admonition in the Talmud (Yevamot 48b): The conager, if the sermon got boring, I'd flip open my Bible to the Song of Solomon, and read the love poems...
...If the person is not ready to convert, extreme pressure can only lead to bitterness and resentment...
...Others found their way into the synagogue on their own, making a rational, individual and personal choice...
...The person becoming Jewish comes from a very different world and brings many fears and doubts as to whether or not he or she is going to make it as a Jew, spiritually and socially...
...It is there...
...Then I went off to a Jesuit university, so I took a look at Catholicism...
...I was then taken through the conversion ceremony, including immersion three times in the mikvah...
...My father prefers that one should be moral and believe in something...
...Because of that statement, and the way it has become embedded in the lore of our people, many people have no idea that a person can become Jewish...
...As I listened to the pain pouring out of the meeting room in New York, I wished I could somehow package my experience, that it could be institutionalized, to show the positive effects of reaching out to the stranger, of welcoming the newcomer...
...Offer one year's free membership to new Jews by choice...
...Jews have suffered too much...
...I'll arrange it...
...And because of that the name 'Moses' is more precious to God than the other names...
...Among these mortal sins were missing mass on Sunday or a holy day of obligation, eating meat on Friday, and others I don't remember...
...Only we began the process a little later in life...
...Our house was full of books on the Old Testament...
...There is a well-known Jewish maxim that says the convert should be pushed away with one hand and helped in with the other...
...My own experience had been so much more positive than many of theirs...
...So is the Torah...
...One toe in the door...
...According to the rabbis, Moses had ten names...
...The desert is ownerless...
...The reason why people choose to become Jewish is so overwhelmingly beautiful, all Jews should share in knowing how it feels to the ger, the stranger who comes in...
...Soon we were chairing committees in temple, participating and sharing in the richness of Jewish life...
...The rabbi wisely told me that I should not try to do everything at once...
...Open...
...When we became engaged, we wished to be married in Washington, his home...
...Seeing for the first time the ark open to the Torah, and then watching the scroll unfold filled me with humility, with awe—and a first deep realization of the meaning of worship...
...I do not want to be forever thought of as a convert," one woman said...
...It was during the writing of this article that I met my husband at a conference on Zionism...
...My father, Christian in the best sense of the word, truly believed I had joined up with the Chosen People...
...Many of the women Jews by choice who have spoken out say that they prefer someone other than the rabbi—or their mother-in-law—to teach them how to lead a Jewish life...
...I spoke, this past year, of the needs and problems of people who have chosen to become Jews...
...Will I be accepted in the Jewish community...
...a need to believe in a reason for being...
...I wanted to know what it was about the Jews and their beliefs that made others want to exterminate them...
...They are my beginnings...
...And person after person repeated that phrase, which I had thought was mine alone...
...I was embraced by my husband's mother, a widow, like Naomi in the Bible...
...I wonder, when they call me "shiksa," if they know that the word "shiksa" means "abominable...
...I know I did, because I tried it without one...
...Most of us hated the word "convert...
...Free to everyone...
...I didn't know I could "get in...
...One day, I picked up a copy of Leon Uris' novel Mila 18 and made a shattering discovery: at age 18,1 didn't know that Hitler had exterminated six million Jews...
...One invited me to join a Sisterhood book discussion group...
...One woman said that the process in her Temple was so cut and dried, it was "Take the course, and line up for the mikvah...
...From brit to religious school to bar or bat mitzvah, to celebrating the festivals, to marriage, synagogue membership, participation in the Jewish community—throughout our lives, until and including the day our Kaddish is spoken, Jewishness is a vibrant, growing process...
...The three of us who came "in" agreed on one thing...
...She is now an absolutely committed and vital Jew...
...And that of our Jewish children...
...I found, to my surprise, that I could "become" Jewish...
...It is based on a talk she delivered to a UJ class on Contemporary Jewish Issues, and is excerpted here...
...I was tested by the Orthodox bet-din...
...When I heard those other stories in New York, about the difficulties, the obstacles that some of the people who chose Judaism had to overcome, including discouragement by rabbis, I realized what a charmed experience my conversion to Judaism had been...
...And that rang a bell with me...
...He sent me to the Bureau of Jewish Education and within a very short time, performed the conversion ceremony...
...another woman who had lost all her family in the Holocaust, who herself had survived disguised as the child of her Berlin Aryan neighbors...
...The Old Testament, with its wonderful stories and poetry, was my favorite...
...I came from a very religious home, and having grown up Southern Baptist, I had a very strong grounding in Bible...
...My Catholic friends had never heard of them...
...For so many Jews by choice, the questions are poignant: after conversion, now what...
...Some indicate that they expect you to drop Judaism and flee, flying into the arms of Christianity when anti-Semitism touches you...
...Until that point, my Jewishness involved the synagogue, books, and the very beginning of a relationship with Israel...
...I've worked with a wonderful family in which the wife decided only after ten years of marriage and two kids that she was ready to convert...
...Anyone to tell me how to mourn...
...However, I don't believe in coercive conversions, because I think that no one should or can convert for another person...
...It was like coming home...
...He counseled me to start with Shabbat and Kashrut and assume one practice at a time...
...The weekends, like that first New York conference, are intensely religious in atmosphere, beginning with a "leaderless" Sabbath service, and then discussing "Why I Chose Judaism," "The Rabbi, His or Her Influence," an evaluation of the introduction-to-judaism courses, and "Becoming Jewish: How It Affected My Family, My Friends...
...One couple invited us to attend Sabbath services with them, and taught me how to prepare Sabbath dinner...
...This was my community, this was my people...
...There could be no compromise: the Church has a set of dogmas, a manifesto of faith, and the Catholic must believe all of it...
...the convert has become a Jew in all respects and must be treated as such...
...We, whose sense of Jewish awareness is necessarily heightened, can—perhaps—help others come to more enlightened consciousness...
...And before the service was over, we were a unit...
...When those other Jews spoke in that New York meeting, one by one, of their feelings of having been rejected, of the coldness and impersonality of their introductian-to-judaism courses, of their initial fears of synagogue, of strange new services and a congregation of strangers, of Jewish families who made them feel like outsiders, I felt compelled to tell my story...
...I felt oppressed by the Pope and the church hierarchy, and by all the acts that were mortal sins, that is, sins so serious that if you should die without confessing them, you would go straight to hell...
...After all," they said, "you don't want to bother the rabbi with such dumb questions, and you want to show your mother-in-law you know how to make challah...
...What I didn't know was that you don't have to be Jewish...
...Will my Jewish family accept me (if this is before marriage...
...And then as I grew older, I was like Jacob...
...In Los Angeles, there is a wonderful post-conversion havurah project, sponsored by the Union of American Hebrew Congregations...
...I was living in Japan, so I took a look at Buddhism...
...That chilly spring evening in Iowa, far away from family, we sat down with friends—and the welcome stranger, a college student far from home...
...We had to read the entire Bible through— and memorize quite a bit of it...
...One common issue: We all need surrogate "Jewish mothers" to teach us by doing with them...
...to be Jewish...
...I learned about the festivals, about the traditions...
...So I went to a Jewish bookstore and there found a little volume by Milton Steinberg called Basic Judaism...
...And then we went back to our life in Des Moines, Iowa, where we were strangers to the Jewish community...
...I have been lucky...
...Men and women from all across America had come—to share their experiences and to guide the Task Force in addressing the needs of Jews by choice...
...Before each holiday, for example, observances and customs are discussed, demonstrated and practiced, so that each person becomes familiar with them...
...They were intelligent, articulate—far more educated in Judaism than I—and by some strange coincidence, very good singers...
...An ordinary dinner party was cause enough for panic during those days of my twenties...
...SHOSHANALEV I was raised in the Roman Catholic church...
...I met with Rabbi Norman Gerstenfeld in his home and at the temple...
...There's hope...
...I say process because I believe conversion is the beginning of a process that lasts throughout one's life...
...There was only family present—my husband's mother, my mother (my father had died the previous year), Uncle Sam Kotz, and his wife...
...They bind me to this faith with its long, unbroken heritage...
...For the next four years, I continued to study, and I started looking for a rabbi who would convert me...
...Bloom, one of the instructors at the university...
...And feeling envy...
...And when my husband's work as a journalist brought us back to Washington in 1964, we were embraced by that community as well...
...Their confidence in their beliefs, and in me, totally eliminated any possible conflicts...
...In the desert...
...For the next few months, while I finished my degree, I continued to go to shul...
...She gave a warm reception for us, to introduce me to her Jewish friends...
...Your people are my people...
...I attended Catholic schools, elementary school through university...
...It was a difficult time in the United States...
...We began our weekend singing Hebrew songs, and reading the Sabbath service together...
...We talked about feeling unwelcome, at first...
...I had always assumed that concentration camps and prisoner-of-war camps were the same thing, and that Hitler was just another tyrant...
...Lydia Kukoff, a former Baptist who holds a master's in Judaic studies and heads the Los Angeles project, has been invited to lead similar conferences at Reform congregations around the country, accompanied by sensitive members of the UAHC staff...
...I was among old friends...
...It was "living Jewish" that these friends taught me, that made me feel at one with what I had learned...
...She needed time, and her family was wise enough to let her have it...
...It's a lifelong process...
...Is my non-Jewish family going to reject me...
...Everywhere I went, I was regarded with suspicion by the Jews I met, who couldn't understand why I wanted to convert...
...From the very beginning, reaching out to seek and welcome converts was an active part of the Jewish tradition...
...His confirmation class was large, the ceremony public (he played the guitar), but I suspect it did not begin to match for him the truly spiritual experience of his bar mitzvah...
...Is there anyone to accompany me to my first Sabbath service...
...Jews used to reach out...
...We knew," they said, "that this was what we needed and wanted...
...Some of us were rejected by our own families...
...He could go to the blackboard and draw, from memory, a map of Moses' journey toward the Promised Land—or anybody else's...
...I, the fourth woman, was thinking to myself, "One out, three in...
...New Jews need our active support...
...For the next few months I continued to study...
...Tuesday, Girls' Auxiliary...
...And so it is with those of us who are Jews by choice...
...My advisor in the philosophy department, my friend for four years, avoided me and refused to come to my wedding, telling another student to let me know how disappointed he was in me...
...Fascinating philosophy—very peaceful, very pragmatic...
...How painful it is for us to hear the word "goyim...
...But my friend went through a conversion course, and became Jewish, like her father...
...This was mine...
...Would that it were so...
...I wrestled with God...
...And during Talmudic times, the rabbis were favorable both to conversion and to converts...
...I'd always thought the Gentiles were the "bad guys" in the Bible—the people we had to convert...
...After that first conference in New York, those of us who participated went back to our home congregations to speak of these matters...
...Hadn't he, after all, taught me what I needed to know about Judaism...
...He refused to speak to me...
...Becoming a Jew cannot be achieved in an 18-week, a 52-week, or even a two-year course of study...
...From the time we were children, we were encouraged to stop in at the church to say a prayer, and to seek counsel from the priest when we were troubled...
...They are new graduates of the introduction-to-judaism course, and they do need a helping hand...
...In Judaism, ethics preceded faith in importance and this was the purity I sought...
...What they need most is acceptance, assurance that they are not regarded as second-class citizens, forever thought of as "different...
...The community is saying, in a concrete way, "We care about you...
...This was not my experience with Judaism before I converted...
...Anyone to teach me how to light the candles...
...There was no place for me in the Church...
...If only you could hear the outpouring of love for this religion among people who have chosen it, you would see that to open our doors, to bring people in and shelter them, is to strengthen our people, our faith...
...Those are indelible memories for me...
...Anyone to show me how to celebrate a deeply meaningful Shabbat in my home...
...Instant Jew...
...And most believe that "Jews do not seek out converts...
...I am so new at this," I said, and we all joined hands as we said the Shehecheyanu, and it didn't matter, because we were celebrating freedom from bondage, and feeling a very special bond with each other...
...But it was just that, to me— a philosophy...
...I had finally, at the age of 22, become a Jew...
...Another verse: "More precious to me are the names given by converts than all the wine that was poured in the altar of the Temple...
...And the rabbis wrote that "they shall flourish like corn, they shall blossom like wine...
...Most Jews think of themselves as having been born Jewish...
...It was as if they were saying, "Just add water, and presto...
...Many times I have heard it wrongly applied to me...
...I learned how to start the process...
...but where was the Bible...
...There is an old rabbinic statement, "Where were the Ten Commandments given...
...Then the Yom Kippur War broke out...
...And that includes those who were born Jewish but never had a quality Jewish education...
Vol. 6 • June 1981 • No. 6
