Anita Diamant - Choosing a Jewish Life: A Handbook for People Converting to Judaism and for their Family and Friends

Contents

For my father,

M AURICE D IAMANT ,

an eternal optimist

whose memory is a blessing, and

for my teacher,

R ABBI L AWRENCE K USHNER

A young man studying for conversion
turned to his teacher and said, But, Rabbi
Kushner, Fitzpatrick isnt a Jewish name.

To which Kushner replied, It will be.

Acknowledgments

Dr. Judith Himber, Rabbi Larry Kushner, Rabbi Barbara Penzner, Rabbi Carl Perkins, Leslie Tuttle, and Rabbi David Wolfman are thoughtful, wise, generous, and extremely busy people who took the time to read this book, chapter by chapter, as I wrote it. Friends and teachers, they were unfailingly helpful, and their comments made this a far better book.

My research put me in touch with many wonderful people. Thanks to Rabbi Norman J. Cohen and Professor Egon Mayer for sharing their respective passions with me. Thanks also to Drs. Joseph Adolph and Robert Levenson, my mohelim. For their contributions, I gratefully acknowledge the help of Elaine Adler, Rabbi Al Axelrad, Rabbi Lewis Barth, Sylvia Beller, Janet Berkenfield, Teddy Bofman, Rabbi Lenore Bohm, Paula Brody, Robin Braverman, Karen Shevet Dinah, Cantor Roy Einhorn, David Fitzpatrick, Rabbi David Gelfand, Rabbi Myron S. Geller of the Gerim Institute, Ellen S. Glazer, Sheila Goldberg, Dru Greenwood, Shoshana Brown Gutoff, Brad Harvey, Pamela Hitchcock, June Andrews Horowitz, Jack Jacobs and Ellen Simpson, Kathy Kahn, Susan Kanoff, Sheila Katz, Susan M. Katz at Stars of David, Rabbi Samuel Kenner, Karen Kushner, Rabbi Steven Kushner, Gila Langner at Kerem magazine, Lori and Eric Lass, Marilyn Levenson and Mark McConnell, Susan Leviton, Judith Lytel and Leslie Sternberg, Rabbi Bernard Mehlman, Debra Mikkelson, Rabbi Steven H. Moskowitz, Dr. Ellen Pashall, Brian Rosman, Rabbi Dennis Sasso, Rabbi Sandy Sasso, Carol Scheingold, Cantor Robert Scherr, Hannah Tiferet Siegel, Rabbi Mark Dov Shapiro, Danny Siegel, Ellen Simpson, Debra Goldstein Smith, Cantor Louise Treitman, Shirley Waxman, Cantor Jennifer Werby, Kai Wilson, Chris and Nancy Winship, Rabbi Paul Yedwed, Cantor Lorel Zar-Zessler and Arnold Zar-Zessler, and Rabbi Elaine Zecher.

I would also like to thank everyone who attended the 199596 conversion and outreach discussion groups at Congregation Beth El of the Sudbury River Valley, where I learned many thingsespecially how little born-Jews understand about the extraordinary experience of choosing Judaism.

Grateful thanks to all of my writing buddies who listened while I kvetched, especially Amy Hoffman, Valerie Monroe, and Edward Myers. Thanks to my agent, Faith Hamlin, and to Arthur H. Samuelson at Schocken Books, who knows what hes doing, and to Jennifer Turvey at Schocken, who made it happen.

My husband, Jim Ball, and my daughter, Emilia, are simply the best cheerleaders a writer ever had.

Preface

My Conversion Story
and Yours

I T WAS A BEAUTIFUL J UNE MORNING . I WAS SITTING in my car, parked on a residential side street and staring at the doorway of a substantial brick building, which housed the professional office of Dr. Schlossberg, a urologist and mohelsomeone who performs circumcisions. Jim Ball, my fianc, had gone through the door a few minutes earlier, accompanied by our rabbi, Lawrence Kushner, to undergo hatafat dam brit, the ritual taking of a drop of blood, required by Jewish law of already circumcised male converts.

Nearly three years earlier, when I first fell in love with Jim, I realized that Id found a life partner, someone with whom I could imagine having a family. At the time, I didnt give a thought to the fact that Jim wasnt Jewish. The issue of intermarriage didnt even occur to me, nor did the possibility of conversion. But recognizing the depth of my commitment to Jim made me acutely aware of my own powerful need to transmit a sense of Jewishness to any child we might have together.

Jim, a lapsed Presbyterian, had no objection to the idea of raising Jewish children and he was perfectly willing to help me build a Jewish home. The problem was mine. Not only was I nonobservant and unaffiliated, I had almost no knowledge of the traditions, history, or rituals of my heritage. Exactly what was it that I wanted to pass on to my theoretical children?

On the one hand, I knew myself to be utterly and unconditionally Jewish. My parents were Holocaust survivors, and although there was very little ritual or observance in my childhood and my formal Jewish education was virtually nonexistent, I was raised to be proud of my heritage. However, unlike my parents and grandparents, I could not impart a purely ethnic or historical kind of Jewishness to my child. I would have to teach her how to be a Jew on my own terms. But what were my terms? What kind of Jewishness could I pass on?

In search of answers, I began to study and make a few tentative forays into Jewish practice. Jim not only supported me, he joined me. Together, we learned the blessings for lighting candles on Friday night, and after our Shabbat meal, we took turns reading aloud from Abraham Joshua Heschels poetic masterpiece, The Sabbath. It was Jim who found an advertisement seeking members for a Jewish study group, no prior knowledge necessary. With that small group of strangers who quickly became friends, we discussed Jewish history, fiction, and theology and began to celebrate Hanukkah and Passover.

When I called Rabbi Kushner to ask him about performing our wedding, he answered by explaining the reasons why he does not officiate at interfaith marriages. And then he said, But if your fianc has any interest in talking about the possibility of converting, have him give me a call.

When I repeated Rabbi Kushners words to Jim, he said, Give me the phone number.

That was our first conversation about conversion. In the process of accompanying me on my search for an authentic Jewish identity, Jim had found a spiritual and communal home for himself as well. And he decided to make it official.

Jim and I met with the rabbi regularly for a year after that, reading the books he assigned and attending an Introduction to Judaism course with about a hundred other people. In the small discussion group to which we were assigned, we heard stories about how difficult and even painful conversion to Judaism can be. One ambivalent young woman seemed to be attending simply to please her fianc, while another woman, who was enthusiastic about becoming Jewish, had to confront rejection by her devout Christian parents. In one married couple, the husbands desire to convert met with strong resistance from his born-Jewish wife.