Well here's an ironic turn of events.
Last night I called up my Southern Baptist grandmother to wish her Merry XMas. She and my uncles and cousins were all gathered there together. They had a quart sized jar filled with coins from my Uncle and Aunt's house. (The same Uncle and Aunt who at least used to be pretty sure my mother was going to hell for converting to Judaism. Incidentally, I happen to love them all dearly.)
My grandmother told me everyone was guessing how much money was in the jar and whoever got the right answer got the jar. Everyone was allowed 3 guesses. Just for fun I made a single guess of $55.
It was $55.47. She called me up tonight, on the first night of Channukah, singing "We Wish You A Merry XMas."
I told her I felt I was crashing their party to get the jar when I wasn't even there, but she assured me that everyone there wants me to have it.
Well, not the jar itself. I guess I'll get a check. :)
So what's up with this one, Hashem? Proud of me for calling my grandmother? 10% to tzedakah, if not more, I promise. (And by the way, with tzedakah, saying you plan to give it counts as an authentic and binding vow. I have to give the money away as soon as it arrives. I wonder where it should go.)
Sunday, December 25, 2005
Wednesday, August 3, 2005
A Story About Being Pushed
I once took a phenomenal Greyhound road trip with my best friend to California for a Phish concert. It was so romantic to throw caution to the wind and head down there together just to see a concert… I’ve never done anything like that again before or after.
One of the challenges in the trip was that I did keep Shabbat and a certain level of Kashrut, and the concert was not until Saturday night. My friend, who was not Jewish, and I stayed with an old friend of my father’s who was Jewish, but Reform. It was not the best experience. The guy was very insulting to my friend, including suggesting that I use her as a Shabbos goy to drive me to an Orthodox shul. (Ironically, she instead walked with me Friday night to a Reform temple several miles away and waited outside for me. She was too uncomfortable with religion and has had enough struggles in life to have good reason to doubt the existence of a God.)
When we got home we had to fend for ourselves for dinner. The family had actually either gone out for dinner, or left us something very treif. I can’t quite remember which. In any case, at that time in my life I had recurring nightmares about eating on Yom Kippur or about accidentally breaking Shabbat. I now stared at the non-Kosher, non-Shabbostic dinner I had pulled together for myself and my non-Jewish friend and I broke into tears.
“I don’t know,” I explained to her. “I don’t know if I’m observant enough. I don’t want to go too far, but I’m missing something.”
She looked at me, stunned, and said she envied that I could struggle with something like this. That with her lack of belief in G-d and her resistance to religion, she could never experience something like that.
That incident remains in my memory as a symbolic turning point. I didn’t become more observant anytime immediately after, but I remember seeing myself in her eyes and realizing how much I wanted MORE out of Judaism, how much I was holding back.
But as I alluded to in The Myth, I’m not sure I ever could have taken the final steps without the unexpected conversion process “forcing” it upon me. Sure, I wanted it, but why? And I had few enough role models to help me become observant. Yes, my Kashrut standards went up as soon as I moved post-college to my first Jewish Orthodox community, but even that was simply a test. I wondered if I could do it, gave it a trial run after Yom Kippur one year, and found it satisfying. As for pushing some of the other limits, I might always be asking the question of whether I could go far enough but for one thing. During my conversion process, I went further than was right for me (and further than I think should have been expected halakhically). Once I’d gone too far, and then settled back to what was right for me (and my family) and acceptable halakhically, the nightmares stopped.
But as I write this I anticipate lectures from people saying I’m no authority, that whatever the rabbis say goes, that I have no right to decide what’s right for myself.
In theory, those lectures would be on target.
And yet I suspect that I’m where I need to be and those lectures are much louder for me than for someone who never has had to face conversion in any form.
Hence, once again, the secrecy. Don't ask. Don't tell you're a convert.
One of the challenges in the trip was that I did keep Shabbat and a certain level of Kashrut, and the concert was not until Saturday night. My friend, who was not Jewish, and I stayed with an old friend of my father’s who was Jewish, but Reform. It was not the best experience. The guy was very insulting to my friend, including suggesting that I use her as a Shabbos goy to drive me to an Orthodox shul. (Ironically, she instead walked with me Friday night to a Reform temple several miles away and waited outside for me. She was too uncomfortable with religion and has had enough struggles in life to have good reason to doubt the existence of a God.)
When we got home we had to fend for ourselves for dinner. The family had actually either gone out for dinner, or left us something very treif. I can’t quite remember which. In any case, at that time in my life I had recurring nightmares about eating on Yom Kippur or about accidentally breaking Shabbat. I now stared at the non-Kosher, non-Shabbostic dinner I had pulled together for myself and my non-Jewish friend and I broke into tears.
“I don’t know,” I explained to her. “I don’t know if I’m observant enough. I don’t want to go too far, but I’m missing something.”
She looked at me, stunned, and said she envied that I could struggle with something like this. That with her lack of belief in G-d and her resistance to religion, she could never experience something like that.
That incident remains in my memory as a symbolic turning point. I didn’t become more observant anytime immediately after, but I remember seeing myself in her eyes and realizing how much I wanted MORE out of Judaism, how much I was holding back.
But as I alluded to in The Myth, I’m not sure I ever could have taken the final steps without the unexpected conversion process “forcing” it upon me. Sure, I wanted it, but why? And I had few enough role models to help me become observant. Yes, my Kashrut standards went up as soon as I moved post-college to my first Jewish Orthodox community, but even that was simply a test. I wondered if I could do it, gave it a trial run after Yom Kippur one year, and found it satisfying. As for pushing some of the other limits, I might always be asking the question of whether I could go far enough but for one thing. During my conversion process, I went further than was right for me (and further than I think should have been expected halakhically). Once I’d gone too far, and then settled back to what was right for me (and my family) and acceptable halakhically, the nightmares stopped.
But as I write this I anticipate lectures from people saying I’m no authority, that whatever the rabbis say goes, that I have no right to decide what’s right for myself.
In theory, those lectures would be on target.
And yet I suspect that I’m where I need to be and those lectures are much louder for me than for someone who never has had to face conversion in any form.
Hence, once again, the secrecy. Don't ask. Don't tell you're a convert.
The Myth
One of the more difficult things that converts face is the fear that if they ever slip a little in halakha, someone will “catch” them and question their status as a Jew. And people WILL question it. I know that. (All the more reason why it is hurtful to expose a convert.) However, a beit din cannot take away your status. Once the mikveh is done in a completely Kosher way, it’s done.
I think the myth partly comes based on how many people – my mother included – have had conversions and were later expected to “upgrade.” And I once had the miserable experience, before my own re-conversion of being treated as a totally different person once I’d let slip that my mother had converted to Judaism. (At the time I was less obviously observant so the person who treated me that way assumed I was utterly ignorant. In a way he was right. That was the first sense I ever had that my mother’s conversion could not have been legitimate enough for me, and ultimately this helped me become more osbervant. But I still resent the way I was treated by that man, and I feel a little cheated that I had to be almost forced to enhance my halakhic growth rather than just get to it in my own time. It’s for another time to discuss whether I ever would have reached a point when I was happy with my own observance if I hadn’t been pushed in that way.)
In any case, while a beit din can legitimately question a non-Kosher conversion, it cannot take away a Kosher conversion. At the same time, however, if a person has a halakhic conversion and then openly and brazenly violates halakha, the beit din will become much more cautious about converting anyone else. The truth is, I think that if I were on a beit din and responsible for making a person into a Jew, I would really keep an eye on them to make sure my sense about them was well-founded. And I can see too why a beit din can be so very slow and cautious about completing a conversion for that very same reason… to make sure they’ve done the right thing. But it’s not fun, or fair, to live in fear of Jewish eyes in that way.
I think the myth partly comes based on how many people – my mother included – have had conversions and were later expected to “upgrade.” And I once had the miserable experience, before my own re-conversion of being treated as a totally different person once I’d let slip that my mother had converted to Judaism. (At the time I was less obviously observant so the person who treated me that way assumed I was utterly ignorant. In a way he was right. That was the first sense I ever had that my mother’s conversion could not have been legitimate enough for me, and ultimately this helped me become more osbervant. But I still resent the way I was treated by that man, and I feel a little cheated that I had to be almost forced to enhance my halakhic growth rather than just get to it in my own time. It’s for another time to discuss whether I ever would have reached a point when I was happy with my own observance if I hadn’t been pushed in that way.)
In any case, while a beit din can legitimately question a non-Kosher conversion, it cannot take away a Kosher conversion. At the same time, however, if a person has a halakhic conversion and then openly and brazenly violates halakha, the beit din will become much more cautious about converting anyone else. The truth is, I think that if I were on a beit din and responsible for making a person into a Jew, I would really keep an eye on them to make sure my sense about them was well-founded. And I can see too why a beit din can be so very slow and cautious about completing a conversion for that very same reason… to make sure they’ve done the right thing. But it’s not fun, or fair, to live in fear of Jewish eyes in that way.
Sunday, July 17, 2005
Defensive
I was a guest last Friday night.
Two older women at the table started talking very casually about a number of "converts" in the community very openly. They were talking about these people fondly, not saying a thing negative. But something about it made me feel really uncomfortable. One person said how amazed she was hearing the path that many of these converts had taken to get to where they were. The other seemed to think that conversion simply involved doing 2 years of study. Neither seemed to know that it is a heart-wrenching process.
And for some reason this made me really defensive.
And I got a little carried away.
I didn't say a word until someone said, "I heard that in _____________ it doesn't take as long." and someone else said, "Oh, those aren't Orthodox conversions." They simply didn't know what actually happens in a Beit Din.
So I jumped in and don't even remember all that much of what I said except that sometimes it takes years and years. I said I'd known people who waited for 5 years and had done everything the Beit Din said but they still weren't converted and didn't know why. I complained about how some rabbis simply lose their calendars and so conversions take way too long.
I said a bunch of other stuff too.
I don't know why I did. I could have stayed quiet. I don't think anything I actually said served a purpose and I'm not even sure how much of it was true. If anything I might have cautioned them not to talk about converts behind their backs, even lovingly.
Clearly I've got some stuff to work through here.
At some point it would be really good to have a long and candid talk with a good down-to-earth rabbi who believes in the process but who is willing to hear stories from "the other side." From a sincere convert's perspective.
I'm still too stuck in my own issues to think about the reasons a beit din operates the way it does.
Two older women at the table started talking very casually about a number of "converts" in the community very openly. They were talking about these people fondly, not saying a thing negative. But something about it made me feel really uncomfortable. One person said how amazed she was hearing the path that many of these converts had taken to get to where they were. The other seemed to think that conversion simply involved doing 2 years of study. Neither seemed to know that it is a heart-wrenching process.
And for some reason this made me really defensive.
And I got a little carried away.
I didn't say a word until someone said, "I heard that in _____________ it doesn't take as long." and someone else said, "Oh, those aren't Orthodox conversions." They simply didn't know what actually happens in a Beit Din.
So I jumped in and don't even remember all that much of what I said except that sometimes it takes years and years. I said I'd known people who waited for 5 years and had done everything the Beit Din said but they still weren't converted and didn't know why. I complained about how some rabbis simply lose their calendars and so conversions take way too long.
I said a bunch of other stuff too.
I don't know why I did. I could have stayed quiet. I don't think anything I actually said served a purpose and I'm not even sure how much of it was true. If anything I might have cautioned them not to talk about converts behind their backs, even lovingly.
Clearly I've got some stuff to work through here.
At some point it would be really good to have a long and candid talk with a good down-to-earth rabbi who believes in the process but who is willing to hear stories from "the other side." From a sincere convert's perspective.
I'm still too stuck in my own issues to think about the reasons a beit din operates the way it does.
Wednesday, July 13, 2005
Disclosure
Yesterday I disclosed to a very good friend the fact that I went through a conversion process. I gave her the whole rundown you see in my introduction. For all the weight that accompanies the experience I went through, disclosure tends to be anticlimactic. This isn't the first time with me. For all the fear I have about someone "catching" me and discrediting who I am again, friends respect me for who I am regardless of whether I was born with all the right "paperwork" or not. She wasn't surprised or shocked. And I was almost disappointed. I think I'm on the brink of seeing this whole identity/experience differently now that I see it's not such a big deal to some people. Maybe in some ways I've blown it up bigger than I can deal with.
Does the fact that her lack of surprise surprises me mean that I personally view converts differently?
I don't know. I have many friends who are very commmitted Jews who converted in. And once I'm convinced (it doesn't take long) that they are living (or trying to live) an observant lifestyle, I consider them kindred.
A discussion for another time, but most of the converts I've known, I've felt in my heart were Jewish even before they finished the necessary (and potentially beautiful) step of mikveh. There are the odd ones who don't really care so much about mitzvot. I don't feel kindred with them. And I suppose I feel threatened by the fact that they are able to convert in. It makes things confusing and hurts the reputation of gerim in general.
(On the other hand, that non-observant conversion could be one step towards growing towards an Orthodox one. IF that's the right thing. IF the beit din doesn't ask so much that the person no longer wants to be Jewish. Is it fair to ask baalei teshuvah to go slow and take one step at a time, but that converts need to go all or nothing?)
There are a million tracks this entry could take me down, but I'm going to stop here and leave them for another time.
Does the fact that her lack of surprise surprises me mean that I personally view converts differently?
I don't know. I have many friends who are very commmitted Jews who converted in. And once I'm convinced (it doesn't take long) that they are living (or trying to live) an observant lifestyle, I consider them kindred.
A discussion for another time, but most of the converts I've known, I've felt in my heart were Jewish even before they finished the necessary (and potentially beautiful) step of mikveh. There are the odd ones who don't really care so much about mitzvot. I don't feel kindred with them. And I suppose I feel threatened by the fact that they are able to convert in. It makes things confusing and hurts the reputation of gerim in general.
(On the other hand, that non-observant conversion could be one step towards growing towards an Orthodox one. IF that's the right thing. IF the beit din doesn't ask so much that the person no longer wants to be Jewish. Is it fair to ask baalei teshuvah to go slow and take one step at a time, but that converts need to go all or nothing?)
There are a million tracks this entry could take me down, but I'm going to stop here and leave them for another time.
Monday, July 4, 2005
Welcome
The following entry has been slightly edited. The contents of this blog used to be shared with a friend, but we seem have to lost touch with each other and, as much as I miss our interactions, I want to have a little more control over the format and content of the blog. Please also be sure to read this "switchover" entry.
At the same time, I really want to invite dialogue with other people who have anything to do with Jewish conversion. Today's actual date is September 30, 2007. The entry below, with a few omissions, was originally written on the date associated with its posting:
(Please forgive the length of this entry!)
In this entry I want to tell you as briefly as I can (no easy feat) who I am and my impressions of the purpose of this site.
What’s up with the name NotBat? Well, I was born Jewish, raised Jewish, and brought further and further Judaism to my family from a young age. When I was born we were Reform, and as the years went by we became more and more interested in becoming more observant. When my parents sent me to a Conservative Jewish summer camp I learned how to daven and came back to teach them how to bentsch after meals. In future years, with other influences, I became observant in other ways as well that affected my family. When I stopped turning on and off lights in my room on Shabbat during my high school years, my parents picked up on it too and eventually we were, without question, living an observant, almost even Orthodox Jewish lifestyle.
In college I continued my religious path, learning how to learn and considering whether or not to take on Kashrut full-time, both in my home and out. I was a leader in my community, one of about 3 to be cornerstones in bringing traditional Friday night services to a place that had eclectic and creative services with little consistency.
So it was a shock when I was told that I was not Jewish. It was a hard time in my family, about a year after my graduation. My father, my half-brother and his ex-wife had all three been diagnosed with cancer. My mother went to our rabbi for comfort and was confronted with the fact that she had never had an Orthodox conversion. As a result, neither she nor I were technically Jewish. (And I will say firmly here, and in future entries, that I agree with the accuracy of this discovery. That does not minimize the depth of the soul-searching it forced upon both of us.)
Hence a long and painful process began of questioning my own identity, living up to a beit din’s vague and inconsistent expectations with little regard for the awesome leaps I had always taken in my personal growth with Judaism. When finally the conversion was complete, I was bitter that the document they gave me said the standard, _____ Bat Avraham. My father was Jewish, and having always known myself to be Jewish, saw no need to adopt a new father, even if the father of all Jews. Hence my identity on this site, NotBat. I am Not Bat Avraham. I am the Bat of my own father.
This name choice is not meant to discredit the thousands of Jews, including my mother, who are bar or bat Avraham, but is instead intended to highlight my own unique situation.
As for this site…
Recently I had the privilege of having a long and soul-searching conversation with Ger-Alicious (my previous partner on this site). A few weeks before I had a very uncomfortable conversation with someone else, also on the subject of conversion, and I observed how much pain I still feel about the process I endured. Yet I am also grateful that I went through it. I know without question it was a cleansing process sent to me by Hashem.
Regardless, the baggage from it is tremendous, and I realize I have few safe places in which to discuss it. Usually when I talk about my “conversion” it is with others going through the process, often quite painfully amongst people who don’t understand. Hence, the necessity of this blog.
I have wanted to tell my story for so long (5 years), and yet have never known where to begin, who to tell or where to tell it. My storytelling will be choppy and sometimes I may say things that contradict, or show my own vulnerabilities, or seem judgmental to those who may not understand or agree with the harshness halakha sometimes brings.
But it will be my story.
And you will tell yours.
Welcome.
At the same time, I really want to invite dialogue with other people who have anything to do with Jewish conversion. Today's actual date is September 30, 2007. The entry below, with a few omissions, was originally written on the date associated with its posting:
(Please forgive the length of this entry!)
In this entry I want to tell you as briefly as I can (no easy feat) who I am and my impressions of the purpose of this site.
What’s up with the name NotBat? Well, I was born Jewish, raised Jewish, and brought further and further Judaism to my family from a young age. When I was born we were Reform, and as the years went by we became more and more interested in becoming more observant. When my parents sent me to a Conservative Jewish summer camp I learned how to daven and came back to teach them how to bentsch after meals. In future years, with other influences, I became observant in other ways as well that affected my family. When I stopped turning on and off lights in my room on Shabbat during my high school years, my parents picked up on it too and eventually we were, without question, living an observant, almost even Orthodox Jewish lifestyle.
In college I continued my religious path, learning how to learn and considering whether or not to take on Kashrut full-time, both in my home and out. I was a leader in my community, one of about 3 to be cornerstones in bringing traditional Friday night services to a place that had eclectic and creative services with little consistency.
So it was a shock when I was told that I was not Jewish. It was a hard time in my family, about a year after my graduation. My father, my half-brother and his ex-wife had all three been diagnosed with cancer. My mother went to our rabbi for comfort and was confronted with the fact that she had never had an Orthodox conversion. As a result, neither she nor I were technically Jewish. (And I will say firmly here, and in future entries, that I agree with the accuracy of this discovery. That does not minimize the depth of the soul-searching it forced upon both of us.)
Hence a long and painful process began of questioning my own identity, living up to a beit din’s vague and inconsistent expectations with little regard for the awesome leaps I had always taken in my personal growth with Judaism. When finally the conversion was complete, I was bitter that the document they gave me said the standard, _____ Bat Avraham. My father was Jewish, and having always known myself to be Jewish, saw no need to adopt a new father, even if the father of all Jews. Hence my identity on this site, NotBat. I am Not Bat Avraham. I am the Bat of my own father.
This name choice is not meant to discredit the thousands of Jews, including my mother, who are bar or bat Avraham, but is instead intended to highlight my own unique situation.
As for this site…
Recently I had the privilege of having a long and soul-searching conversation with Ger-Alicious (my previous partner on this site). A few weeks before I had a very uncomfortable conversation with someone else, also on the subject of conversion, and I observed how much pain I still feel about the process I endured. Yet I am also grateful that I went through it. I know without question it was a cleansing process sent to me by Hashem.
Regardless, the baggage from it is tremendous, and I realize I have few safe places in which to discuss it. Usually when I talk about my “conversion” it is with others going through the process, often quite painfully amongst people who don’t understand. Hence, the necessity of this blog.
I have wanted to tell my story for so long (5 years), and yet have never known where to begin, who to tell or where to tell it. My storytelling will be choppy and sometimes I may say things that contradict, or show my own vulnerabilities, or seem judgmental to those who may not understand or agree with the harshness halakha sometimes brings.
But it will be my story.
And you will tell yours.
Welcome.
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