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.