Our People/Jewish Geography

...At Christmas and Easter, although they have shed their attachments to the religious significance of these holidays, they often miss their childhood days—and the families and faiths which, in fact, made them receptive to Judaism in the first place...

...There are two emotional facts Jews by birth and Jews by choice are afraid to face...

...My son is marrying a Catholic girl, and I don't know what to do...

...I went to St...

...Many Jews by birth were beaten up, as kids, by students from schools like St...

...I'm ashamed to tell my rabbi or neighbors about it...

...Also—it would present the Jews to his wife in a welcoming light, not as a people who puts up obstacles to the acceptance of newcomers...

...They all know someone who was part ofZBTor Sammy's, who belonged to this synagogue or that youth group...

...Hilda's Academy, is a Jew...

...A Jew who has been accepted into the covenant, whether at 8 days or at 40 years, whether from Flatbush Yeshiva or St...

...A letter from Milwaukee: "I converted three years ago, have a kosher home and am shomer shabbas, but I still have problems with many of my Jewish friends...

...Furthermore, many agree with the writer, saying that it would be a good idea to hold a public bris or naming...

...Our answer to our friend in Milwaukee is that she should assert that she went to St...

...But the head rabbi in my city refuses to conduct the conversion unless my wife converts, too...

...The anti-Semitism they faced on the sandlots and the streets defined their Judaism, for life...

...we doubt that many converts would feel the need to spend more than a year in them...

...When she got pregnant she and I agreed that the child would be converted to Judaism...

...When they ask me where I came from, my mouth dries up...

...The community should establish support groups in every city for any Jew by choice who chooses to participate...

...She began to cry...

...In the support groups, the Jews by choice could examine the transitions they have undergone and are still undergoing, and could discuss both their losses and their gains...

...Our communal institutions should be helping them through these feelings, feelings they must confront and grapple with before their complete emotional transformation into Jews can occur...

...Finally, a rabbi in a distant city agreed to do the conversion...

...Indeed, they may have more influence on their grandchildren than they did on their children...

...He went on to forbid her to join his congregation and her kids to attend the Hebrew school...

...Why couldn't her friends have called it gourmet chicken or tasty chicken...

...It was simply a matter of the spices she'd put on the meat, not of religion or background...

...To her, conversion was an obstacle, not a new beginning...

...Hilda's, too, is becoming a reference point of Jewish geography...

...the act of going to the mikveh, dramatic as it can be, rarely makes them feel Jewish...

...The rabbi asked a few questions, and, quite out of the blue, told her: "You're not Jewish...

...That isn't right, halachically or psychologically...

...They are locked inside the walls of self-constructed prisons...

...I refuse to go to the wedding even though he's my only son...

...No one mentions my status in my synagogue, but I feel singled out...

...At the very least, such groups would help lift the burden of guilt that each parent—each imagining him/herself quite alone—feels...

...That way, the child's Jewish identity would be firmly stamped in the community's collective mind...

...We've found that, no matter how neutrally Jews by birth think they're using the terms, phrases like these are offensive to converts...

...I don't want to conceal my past, but I also don't want to set off their hostilities...

...The problems and the possibilities often come to us intertwined, as in this letter from Cincinnati: "/ have read your column since moment began to publish it...

...It has brought us face to face with many of the problems confronting the community, and has given us glimpses of the possibilities and potentialities for its future...

...The makeup of these groups would, by their very nature, be transitional...

...That feeling was only reinforced by the (non-) action of the rabbi who had defined her status: He never contacted her again...

...I'm very lonely and very sad...

...One is that converts do have particular feelings—special, problematic feelings...

...Such remarks clearly have a marginalizing—and worse, alienating—effect...

...Indeed, such confrontations are their Judaism...

...For people like this woman, the community should by now be forming support groups...

...She should also remember that she is an authentic Jew...

...children and even her husband— should go to the mikveh...

...The other fact, difficult to acknowledge, is that converts feel a special sense of loneliness which often surfaces at Christian holiday time...

...Finally, after a difficult year of deliberation and anguish, she decided that the entire family—herself, her Paul Cowan, a staff writer for the Village Voice, and Rachel Cowan, program director at New York City's Ansche Chesed, are moment contributing editors for this feature...

...After all, that is her past...

...And she should also realize—as we've learned in these months of travelling, writing and speaking—that St...

...But that would be a year well spent, a time for their special problems to be acknowledged...

...It may seem funny, but her belief in G-d brought me back to Torah...

...For example, a woman from the Midwest (whose father is a prominent Jew) who had always believed that she was Jewish...

...She was proud to be an ethnic and religious Jew...

...There is a paradox at work in the fears this writer expresses...

...As a child, she was the one asked, year after year, to describe Chanukah and Passover to her classmates...

...Hilda's...

...She sees G-d working in every human event...

...The letter from Milwaukee continues: "Besides, it doesn't matter what part of America my spouses' friends are from when they play Jewish geography...

...It might even lead her to consider conversion...

...Some, we've discovered, remember those days and those events with a perverse pleasure of sorts...

...So, where are the rabbis, the synagogues, the communal leaders, the community centers...

...One woman who became a Jew 20 years ago was praised by her friends for the "goyishe chicken* she had cooked...

...To Jews by choice, they ring of the same prejudice that jars Jewish ears when confronted with the accepted American phrase, "I'm going to jew him down...

...I don't know how to talk with them, but if I could I'm sure we would all learn a great deal...

...I can't stand it when they make references to 'shiksas,' or 'sheigitzes,' or 'the goyim.' / feel insulted...

...Just as the Jew by choice has accepted a covenant encompassing the people of Israel, the people of Israel have accepted a covenant which embraces the new Jew by choice...

...If only this woman knew that there are, quite literally, tens of thousands of people like her in America, people who blame themselves for a fact of contemporary life, people who are afraid to discuss their fears and the realities with their friends...

...The problems: We've received many letters from people who are intermarrying, and from people who are choosing Judaism...

...A correspondent from South Carolina tells us: "I'm glad that someone is finally talking openly about converts...

...Some of these emotions are internal...

...But I'd like it to be done here, so that my friends can attend the bris...

...Every religious authority we've contacted has confirmed our sense that the local rabbi's ruling in this case was based on bias, not law...

...Some are filled with pain...

...It has been a marvelous—and instructive—odyssey...

...She never thought twice about the fact that her mother, a midwesterner with an Episcopalian background, had undergone a Reform conversion when the daughter was eight...

...That way, there could be no question about men-status...

...The silence itself seems like a comment on my status—people must have feelings about it...

...Through this column, through Raul's lectures on An Orphan in History and Rachel's descriptions of her conversion, through the workshops we've conducted for interfaith couples, we've met thousands of Jews from all across the country, from every point on the religious spectrum...

...This woman's family-rooted love of Judaism—which had prepared and fortified her to withstand the bigotry of her high school classmates— had been undermined...

...Hilda's...

...Her identity was shattered...

...At best, the parents will learn—as the grandparents of Jane Baron, the woman we wrote about last month, knew—that, by loving their grandchildren, they can play a decisive role in forming their religious identity...

...She married a Jew...

...Many of them have ceased to live an actively Jewish life, or have felt ambivalent about raising their children in distinctly Jewish environments...

...Hilda's in Milwaukee, but I'm afraid to tell them that...

...Meanwhile, a growing number of kids who grew up in the St...

...During those high school years, she was blackballed from the cotillions the Gentiles ran...

...From California, a reader writes: "/ was raised in an Orthodox home, and married a fundamentalist Christian...

...Hildas of America have since become Jews by choice...

...Sometimes that emotional transformation won't occur for years and years after the visit to the mikveh...

...She was sure that this was the right step, but inside, the act felt, in her words, "like a funeral...

...Then, when she was 34 and her children were in grade school, she went to an Orthodox synagogue in her neighborhood to enroll the kids in Hebrew school...

...Every Friday night, she lit Shabbat candles, and she strove to lead an increasingly observant life...