Wait, maybe I am really Jewish!

It just feels odd not being really Jewish.

My friend Annie of The Big No sent me an article from The New Yorker on people converting after October 7. I happen to have gone to college with Rabbi Angela Buchdahl, who is quoted several times. Her husband was the roommate of my first college boyfriend (who was Jewish on his father’s side, though I don’t know if he practices now, doesn’t seem like he did then - that was Julian for those who went to Yale with us.)

I have thought for awhile that I would not covert, and I’m not making any big decisions because I’m going through a lot of changes now anyway. But several things have happened that have leaned me back toward the idea of exploring conversion.

One is rather subtle: I am consistently way more comfortable in the company of Jewish people than non. It’s not just because Israel is near the top of my mind most of the time, there’s just something about Jewish culture that I feel more comfortable with than non-Jewish American culture of most any stripe that I have encountered. When I make new friends, they tend to be Jewish.

Another is less subtle: at the Christmas season, I happened to spend a lot of time with people who are of a somewhat evangelical Christian faith. While I like these people, I realized that I am uncomfortable bordering on creeped out by their beliefs. Something along the lines of “God is our employer, a man in the sky who gives us good things if we obey him.” I grew up with a much more complex Christianity than that. I remember my mom being quite annoyed when I once said I had prayed for G-d to send money so I could visit a friend in California. Our G-d does not bestow presents as a result of prayer. Our G-d also does not seek marionettes. G-d does not wish to pull our strings. We have free will for a reason. You may not agree with any of this and I don’t ask you to, I am only stating the kind of Christian faith I grew up with, and why it doesn’t really fit with the evangelical, Oxford Group kind. I also get a bit upset by the assumption that everyone in a group is Christian when there are visibly Jewish people in attendance. Merry Christmas, but happy Hanukkah and happy day if you don’t celebrate a religious holiday in late December.

Maybe I’m also realizing that now that my Dad is in heaven, he would have no objection to me converting. He was delighted to see me engaged in Jewish life and worship and Zionist activism, but I always worried that if I actually took the plunge (oh terrible pun I just realized) he might be sad. He had always held out hope that I would either get a PhD or become an ordained minister. My mom would be perfectly happy if I declared that I was a Druid or a priestess of the cat goddess Bastet - but my Dad may still have felt a little sad if I were really to abandon being a Christian.

The thing is, I haven’t identified with Christianity for a long time. I never was all that into the divinity of Christ, though I think the story is a nice one. These days I find myself thinking, “Yeah, I would have hoped for a military leader to lead us out of Roman rule.” I like the Maccabees. Are any of them still single? No, that falls into the number 1 category of unavailable men: men who are dead. (If you haven’t read that article, take a minute and do. It’s one of my funniest, and sometimes I have to write something funny, when it’s either laugh or cry.)

Another thing that is making me reconsider (or continue considering) is that the two reasons I moved away from the synagogue I was attending was simply the difficulty in getting there (dangerous trip on transit at night, Lyft expensive, and I don’t drive in the city) and that the Reform congregation was way more iffy about Israel than I am. Now that I am planning to move, that opens the possibility of finding a congregation that is less squishy on Israel. I really love the leadership and the people, but I felt like I was hiding my Zionism there too. Seems to defeat part of the purpose.

I had a conversation with a rabbi in Lancaster, a place we are thinking of moving. He was introduced to me by my Israeli super-connector friend, and it sounded like a wonderful place. As more and more of my social connections that are meaningful to me seem to originate in Jerusalem, often bouncing across continents, I wonder if there is a message in this.

I feel way more connected to G-d in a Jewish place of worship than in a Christian church, and I personally do need a community of faith. My Dad was always right about that.

There is a conservative synagogue in town, but it doesn’t have Friday night services, just Saturday morning. I imagine that most of the families have Shabbat dinner at their own homes on Friday nights, but I have no Jewish family here. A friend from the Substack community invited me to their house for Shabbat, but it’s far away (but thank you!) I hear there is a website where you can get yourself invited to Shabbat dinner. It just feels odd not being really Jewish.

I do need a spiritual connection and a religious community, and while I may be aware that I did not grow up Jewish when I am in Jewish spaces, I am even more aware that I am not an Oxford Movement Christian. The progressive Christian church seems to have left me quite some time ago when it became an anti-Trump rally in 2016, and when I go to Christian churches where there are prayers for Palestinians but no prayers for Israelis or the hostages, or see a keffiyeh wearing baby Jesus picture on the Facebook page of a friend who is an Episcopal priest, I feel like I’m in the wrong room. I’m all for praying for peace, but I think y’all know me well enough to know that I believe that a decisive Israeli victory is the only way to lasting peace.

I can imagine making Shabbat dinners (I learn cooking fast, someone could teach me) and observing the Jewish holidays. I loved going to Torah study and engaging with the text much more deeply than I had ever seen done even in my Dad’s Sunday school classes. These people just cared about their religion and their heritage in a way that most Christians don’t.

I love the Jewish spirit of questioning and disagreement. It fits with my nature of not blindly following along with anything.

So I think I will go back to synagogue, back to Torah study when I am not visiting my mom on Saturdays, and give this thing more prayerful consideration.

Happy New Year, y’all. And happy birthday, even if it’s not your birthday

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