A Jew-By-Choice Asks the Big Question
I was in a bar in Park City, Utah, squeezing past middle-aged men with mustaches drooping past their chins, guys in their early twenties discussing the most efficient way to get their dogs high, and young women still in ski boots trying to get the guys’ attention, when I found myself face to face with a man wearing a baseball hat with Hebrew lettering. As soon as I saw him, I grinned. “I like your hat,” I said. “I’m Jewish, too.”
My parents never imagined I would experience such a moment of tribal identification. My family is Episcopalian, and my grandfather was a priest. We went to church every week and discussed theology and church politics around the dinner table.
I was in high school when I first understood that I was not a Christian. I was reciting the Nicene Creed, a statement of Christian faith that declares, “We believe in Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, begotten, not made.” I realized that I didn’t feel comfortable saying the prayer. I didn’t believe in Jesus Christ. When I told my mother, she replied that reciting the Creed need only mean that you want it to be true, and that you’ll act as though it is. This didn’t make me any more comfortable. The idea of Jesus’ divinity didn’t resonate with me, and so I felt no desire for a world in which that divinity was real.
When I went to college, I stopped going to church regularly. I became good friends with the president of the Hillel, and I began to join her for weekly services and holiday celebrations. At Hillel, my anxiety about faith subsided. I felt Jewish.
Primed by a religious childhood, I was ready to dedicate myself to a new faith. Since I’ve decided to convert, Jewish people often ask me: Why Judaism? Jews-by-birth wrestle with this question as well, but that struggle is often indirect. In converting, Jews-by-choice make a clear and wholly voluntary choice to live a Jewish life, and they invite the question, why?
I feel called to Judaism in part because of my mother’s assessment of prayer, that praying doesn’t indicate certainty, only hope and a commitment to live as though the object of that hope is real. Though I’m not certain God exists, and I’m not sure that Torah carries spiritual and moral authority, I want these things to be true. The idea that I will begin by acting as though they are true seems to me both deeply logical and fundamentally Jewish.
It is logical because the persistent question for a person of faith in the world is, “So what?” If that question is not answered by action, it has no answer at all. As Heschel writes, “The God of nature is the God of history, and the way to know him is to do his work.” As the Israelites said to God after receiving the Commandments, “We will do, and then we will listen.” We will live as though God is the moral authority. For me, this provides a guide for acting ethically in the world.
By observing Shabbat, I live as though God is the moral authority. In turn, I find that keeping Shabbat turns my attention away from pettiness and material concern and toward generosity. I live as though God is the moral authority by attending services and following the Jewish calendar. In turn, I am more forgiving, more conscious of our position in history, and more tied to the Jewish community. As many Jews-by-birth know instinctively, eating Matzah is closely tied to feeling a familiar relief when spotting a lone Jewish stranger in a bar.
Choosing Judaism has given me a way of acting ethically and optimistically in the face of uncertainty. This life is rooted in my Episcopal family’s outlook, but for me, it is only possible to live this way as a Jew.
