Go and Find Yourself: What Brought Me to Reform Judaism
I sometimes feel insecure as a Reform convert – but the important thing is that there is space in Judaism for uncertainty. I'm not required to know what I believe, only how I should behave.
I sometimes feel insecure as a Reform convert – but the important thing is that there is space in Judaism for uncertainty. I'm not required to know what I believe, only how I should behave.
Conversion was not an instantaneous event, but a journey that began years before, when I first began to wonder why we fast on Yom Kippur - and it was one that would continue long after I emerged from the mikveh.
For many years, I felt inhibited to knock on the door of a synagogue. Simultaneously, my heart and gut knew where I belonged. There is in fact Jewish ancestry on my father’s side – contested by some relatives; strong enough to reinforce my feelings of visceral kinship.
I hired an ancestral DNA expert to analyze my Jewish blood but, frustrated with my demands for details, he sent a curt email I will never forget: “You’re either Jewish or you’re not,” he wrote. Maybe this search was as much about my faith as it was about my heritage. Maybe I really was a Jew at heart, too.
During this journey, I’ve been asked: “Why?” In Judaism, I found meaningful rituals and a history of peoplehood that I have taken on as my own. From the time I left the Christian church, I sought a spiritual home – a place of tolerance and acceptance. In Judaism, I’ve found exactly that.
Next week at this time, I’ll be stepping into the mikveh, the Jewish ritual bath. It’s been a yearlong journey that will lead me to that holy space, one I’ll enter as a former Catholic/not-quite-Jew and exit as a Jewish woman – no longer an outsider.
I was born into a Catholic family and given a Catholic education, but for as long as I can remember, Judaism has always fascinated me.
When I first heard the term “Thanksgivukkah”—the convergence of Chanukah and Thanksgiving—and that it was happening this year, I must admit that I became a little anxious because it brought back some of my interfaith marriage insecurities that I thought were long gone.