#convert student

People told me this while I was a student and I didn’t not believe them but I also felt that I couldn’t really change that much; if I’m Jewish in my soul, how much could really change for me after my conversion is complete? I expected to feel more True, more aligned, more me. But not different.

Now that I’m on the other side of conversion I can testify that you are different afterward. I waited several weeks to make this post because I wanted to feel more grounded in my new identity before making a statement like this but now I wish I hadn’t waited because some of my ability to identify exactly what’s different is lost since I’ve become so detached from my pre-conversion self.

I think a little bit of The Difference has to do with how you expect to feel after vs. how you actually feel after. I expected to primarily feel excited for all of the Jewish things that I get to do now. And I still felt that/feel that a bit. But unexpectedly, the primary feeling was/is a deep sense of responsibility and obligation. I’ve posted on here before that I’m pregnant (almost 9 months now!) and in going through the experience of pregnancy, I’ve heard parents say when they met their infant for the first time, that’s also what they felt; not excitement or even love at first. I think that’s really similar to my post-conversion experience. I’ve always felt a strong love for Judaism but it’s still a new love, and now that I’m Jewish that love is going to mature and get deeper but that requires time; so love isn’t the primary emotion anymore.

The primary feelings are responsibility and obligation. I think when I say those words, the connotation might be taken as negative (like ‘oh now I have to do all this stuff and I don’t wanna’) but that’s not accurate. It’s still “now I have to do all this stuff” but also “I’m honored to have to do all of this stuff.” I have a responsibility to Hashem and to my Jewish community now that didn’t exist before and it’s something that I’m honored to be expected to fulfill.

I have moments sometimes where I find myself thinking “Why am I doing this? Converting to a religion is so huge and serious and complicated - why did I decide to put myself through this? Is it really that important to me? Is this an honest reflection of who I am?” These moments are really hard and leave me feeling like I don’t have any direction, I don’t know what I’m doing and I worry that I’m being impulsive. At their foundation, these moments are born from the worry - what if I’m not really Jewish? I know I’m not officially Jewish yet so, yes, literally I am not Jewish right now, but what I mean when I say that/feel that is what if, in my soul, in my heart of hearts, I’m not really Jewish? What if this is all fake? What if this is all a phase? For example, I love (in the deepest sense of the word) attending Torah Study on Shabbat mornings. And afterword, I enjoy davening with my congregation but the only part I love about davening is saying The Shema. I catch myself thinking that if I don’t love everything about Judaism then there must be something about me that’s not fully Jewish.

On the other hand, I can’t ignore the profound and purely filling experiences I’ve had within Judaism. I can’t devalue the overwhelming emotion I felt when I first learned the depth and the meaning of the Tetragrammaton. I can’t de-emphasize my visceral reaction to certain Midrashim I hear during Torah study. I can’t minimize how meaningful and important it felt to receive Kol Nidre and fast on Yom Kippur.

And we set a date for my beit din and mikveh and it’s on May 3rd. MAY THIRD It’s so soon and I’m so excited but also so nervous.

I have to do so much in the next month:

Make the final decision on what my Hebrew name is going to be

Prepare a drash on the Torah portion for the week of my mikveh

Read the portion

Read the commentary that’s in my Chumash

Read commentary by Mary Douglass

Read commentary by Plaut

Talk through my ideas with my husband

And then, finally, write about it

Meet with my Rabbi one more time before my Mikveh date to check in about my ideas for the Torah portion, confirm that I’m on the right track.

I also want to keep up on reading the weekly Torah portion and taking notes on it and the Torah Study meetings like I have been and I want to keep reading the books I’ve started. AND I was going to email my former Jewish Studies professor to ask if I can get the reading materials from him for a new class that he’s teaching that I won’t be able to attend. There’s so much!

I probably have to just put the other things that aren’t time-based (reading my books and asking for the reading material from my professor) on the back burner and focus on weekly Torah study stuff and my Torah portion for now.

I feel amped and overwhelmed all at the same time. I want to do all of it but I’m afraid of trying to do too much, holding myself to unrealistic standards, failing, not doing my best, over thinking... you know, the works. 

A couple of months ago I made a long text post about why I’ve chosen to convert to Judaism (and how it’s hard to find words to describe the why of it) and in that post I also talked about my apprehension to tell my family for fear that I wouldn’t have the language I need to help them understand my choice.

Since my mikveh date is coming up and this baby I’m carrying will be Jewish, I ran out of the luxury of having time to mull it over and I just had to commit to telling them - before my mikveh and before the baby is born.

I told my mom a few weeks ago. Her response was “You’ve wanted to be Jewish since you were 12,” and “I just want you to be happy and if this makes you happy then it must be a good thing.”

I told my dad over the weekend. His response was “You choosing to commit yourself to a religion makes me feel like I did something right as your father.”

Neither of them asked me to validate my choice to them. Neither of them reacted with anger or fear - just unconditional love. I still have to tell my grandparents and my husband’s family but I never had any reservations about those conversations.

This post is a work in progress. I will repost it and add things, change things and adapt ideas as I learn more about Judaism and myself. Articulating with language why I want to be Jewish has been so challenging for me. It’s a visceral feeling that I can’t ignore but I have no words for it.

I had a negative experience with a rabbi around Sukkot. I was invited to dinner at their home to experience Shabbat in a sukkah. One of the two rabbis there casually asked me why I’m choosing to convert to Judaism and I struggled to answer him because I was completely unprepared for this question. I said “It’s hard to explain. I’ve been in the Judaic Studies program at university and that led me to explore Judaism on a more on a personal level. I have very specific ways of understanding God and I’ve been trying to find a spiritual home for those concepts and I think I’ve found that in Judaism.”

Ture to form (I’m a classic reassurance seeker when I need to feel less anxious about something), I pressed my husband after we got home and asked him how what I said sounded. To my horror, he said that it wasn’t great and that it sounded like I just heard about Judaism in college and then decided to be Jewish.  He said it sounded flippant and not representative of my actual reasons for converting and he was right.

That was months ago and I still feel here. If someone today were to ask me why I would say the same thing. It’s the only tangible, linguistically representable concept that I have to explain what led me to this choice.  When I tell people I’m converting it’s so understandable for their first question to be “Why?” But they don’t realize that they’re asking me something so deep. There is no genuine casual answer and my genuine answer would not be appropriate to address in a casual conversation. And when I’ve been asked I try to give them something that I don’t even have for myself - a way to say with words how I feel about Judaism.

I was with a friend at a coffee shop a while ago and I told them that I’m converting to Judaism. I thought I was setting myself up for success because it was an environment where he and I could really talk about why and what that means to me but he didn’t ask, at least not then. He asked me why while we were on our way out, standing at the counter waiting for our to-go orders. And I was put right back where I was at Sukkot. I ended up giving him the same panicked answer.

This is becoming really important for me to figure out. I’m going to tell my family that I’m converting the next opportunity I have to bring it up organically. I don’t see them often and we’re going home during Christmas so this might be the time. These conversations are going to be really challenging. They will not understand, they might be angry, I will probably be criticized and shamed for my decision. I will be met with not only “Why are you converting to Judaism?” but “Why in the world would you want to convert to Judaism?” I need to be prepared to defend and articulate myself against the initial push back.