JewsByChoice.Org

I was at the mountain, it just took me a while to remember being there.

That’s how I think about my Jewishness. There is a teaching within Judaism that every Jew who ever lived, and who ever will live, was present in spirit at Har Sinai when the Torah was given to Moshe Rabbeinu, and we responded collectively “kol had’varim asher d’ber Hashem na’aseh,” accepting the Torah and our identity as one people with a mission. And as a convert, I was there too. My soul has always been Jewish, it just took me a while to realize it. So in a sense, conversion to Judaism is more like waking to one’s true identity than it is like changing one’s religion. Becoming a Jew is realizing part of you always was one, that this people, Am Yisrael, is the family from which you have been inexplicably separated, and from whom you can no longer bear to be apart. We are one people, one nation, with one destiny, whether religious or secular, Ashkenazi, Sephardi, or Mizrachi, and becoming a Jew is recognizing that you cannot imagine yourself not being a Jew.

Of course, despite this profoundly deep and strong connection to the Jewish people, taking on the responsibilities that go along with being a Jew requires a lot of work. There is no impulsive, feel-good-and-say-a-prayer method for becoming a Jew. When you’ve been raised away from your culture, it takes a long time to get up to speed. Hebrew is the language of our people, and one has to be able to read it at least a bit in order to access the tradition in any depth. There are thousands of years of Jewish history to learn, an inexhaustible amount of Jewish philosophy to consider, an astounding volume of Jewish ritual practice to master. And the moment of one’s conversion does not signal the end of this study, but merely the beginning of a lifetime of further Jewish learning. Becoming a Jew requires a level of commitment to the Jewish people that is, at least partly, demonstrable in the seriousness with which one engages this learning. There are no shortcuts, no free passes, no easy buttons.

I have been living an officially Jewish life since Sivan 13, 5763, or what is June 13, 2003, on the Gregorian calendar. For a couple of years prior to that I was studying for conversion, but formal conversion studies came after a lifetime of, at least at the time, unexplainable interest in and feeling of connection to the Jewish people and religion. Throughout my teenage years I read anything I could get my hands on about Jewish cultures, history, and Israel, and although I was raised in a Christian home, Christianity never really seemed to work for me, despite my best efforts. On the other hand Judaism made intuitive sense to me, and after spending several months studying the differences between the two, and whether what I would gain by converting would make losing everything I’d known worthwhile, I decided to start looking for a rabbi to study with. And I have never looked back.

Living a religious Jewish life has been rewarding and difficult, sometimes at the same time. There are times in the synagogue or at home with my family, or during my davening, when the incredible beauty of being a Jew has taken my breath away, and the love I feel for my people has been so moving it hurts. And there are also times when I have felt spiritually frustrated, and wanted to forget that I am a member of the tribe. But all families experience this emotional pilpul, and at the end of the day I can not imagine myself being any other way. I am a Jew, I will always be a Jew, and, at least according to the teaching I mentioned above, at some level I have always been one.

I am looking forward to sharing my thoughts with readers and the other contributors, and I hope that you will find this and future posts engaging and enjoyable!

kol tuv,
Yair