As anyone who has studied Judaism in any depth can attest, conversion to Judaism is more than just adopting the religion of the Jewish nation, it is also becoming part of the people Israel.  Yet the vast majority of conversations about why people convert or how they begin living a Jewish life seem to focus on religious matters.  I have often wondered why this is the case, as for me anyway the religious aspect was the easiest part.  A person either believes in a particular expression of Judaism and its tenets enough to live them, or she doesn’t.  But actually becoming Jewish is about more than just digging Judaism; it’s joining a tribe, a cultural group, and learning to function in and feel like a member of the group can be quite difficult by comparison to learning a new spiritual tradition.  Perhaps a couple of examples will shed some light on my point.

During the 20th century the Jewish people experienced what were almost surely its lowest and highest points in the last 2,000 years.  The horror of the Holocaust and the extermination of 1/3 of world Jewry in it flowed immediately into the euphoria of the rebirth of the State of Israel, where Jews became the sovereign power again in our

ancestral homeland.  It is difficult to overstate the emotional impact of these two occurrences, and both have had a profound impact on the Jewish nation throughout the world.  I of course knew about the Holocaust before I converted, and felt its utter tragedy in the stories of those who experienced it, but it wasn’t MY history, it was theirs.  I was enamored with Israel, and somewhat obsessed with its history and cultural diversity, but it wasn’t something to which I was connected as a member prior to my conversion, and actually feeling what it means to be a person connected by shared peoplehood to Israelis and by history to Eretz Yisrael took time.  As a Jew I have shed tears at museums commemorating the Shoah, and I have also shed them with my face pressed to the Kotel, and with my feet in the dust on top of Masada or in the Mediterranean near Haifa.  I can say I really do feel the history of the Jewish People as my own history, but it certainly took some time for that to be the case.

Converts to Judaism can also testify to the fact that joining the Jewish People means leaving something of your own heritage behind, replacing it in some ways with a new one.  The majority of my biological ancestors were Scandinavians, Celts, and Germans, and elements of those cultures are still important to me, but in becoming a Jew I have in many ways severed my connection to the peoples from whom I am descended.  My diet has changed, my festivals have changed, my children’s names reflect their membership in the Jewish People rather than the northwestern European diaspora.  This change was not easy for my own family of origin to adjust to and although we still maintain loving relationships, we no longer share certain things we did in the past as a result of my decision to throw my lot in with my adoptive People.  So along with the joy I felt at becoming a Jew, it was a touch bittersweet (not that I would change anything!!!) to know that by necessity I was a little less connected to the cultures of my ancestors.

Learning to relate to the Shoah and to Israel as realities in my own life required me to start thinking of myself as a Jew.  As converts we often spend a lot of time worrying about whether or not we are accepted as Jews by other Jews, but in my own experience it was learning to internalize being a Jew that made me start to really identify personally as Jewish, and to begin to relate to the entirety of Jewish civilization as such.  I would be interested in learning what readers have to share on this topic.  When did you begin to really understand Jewish culture and history as being your own?  How have you navigated the impact on family relationships and on your own relationship to your culture of birth (or upbringing)?