JewsByChoice.Org

I would like to take a moment and introduce everyone to our newest contributor here at JewsByChoice.org. Her name is Shimshonit and I’m sure some of you are already familiar with her, because she’s been a regular here on the blog for a couple of months now. Anyhow her journey into Judaism is a very interesting one and I think she’s going to bring a new dimension, to our discussion here on the blog.

Anyhow below is a short bio to help you all get to know her a little better.

Shimshonit began life as a patrilineal Jew, though when she actually began life (1967) there was no such thing.  (The Reform vote to recognize patrilineal descent didn’t come about until 1983.)  Uncomfortable with the awkwardness of having to tell people she was “half-and-half,” and painfully conscious that she was in fact neither, she played hide-and-seek with Judaism for most of her childhood and early adulthood.  It wasn’t until she began to think about marriage and a family that she made the decision to pursue Judaism once and for all. 

In 1996 she packed up and went to Israel.  For sixteen months she studied Hebrew, Jewish history, practice, and philosophy, and traveled all over the country.  (She also met the man who would someday become her husband.) 

Though Orthodoxy had always been remote and even repugnant to her, in Israel Shimshonit began keeping kosher, observing Shabbat a little at a time, and meeting Orthodox Jews who were surprisingly normal people.  In the end, to strengthen her ties to the Jewish nation and to reclaim her Jewish ancestry, Shimshonit made the decision to undergo an Orthodox conversion.  Returning to Boston, she completed the process (dunked November 9, 1998), married, and began a family in the warm, inspiring modern Orthodox community of Newton, Massachusetts. 
After some years, heeding the siren song of Israel, Shimshonit and her husband returned to Israel with their three young children in 2006.