Hello everyone, and welcome to Becoming Jewish!
(TW: suicide, psych hospitalization)
My name is Emma, and I’m in the process of converting to Conservative Judaism. I’ve been trying to think of a way I can document this journey, as well as share my experiences, and it finally occurred to me that I should start a blog. So here we are, at the very first post of said blog!
I am a 22yo college student, currently studying Ecology and Evolution. I’m also disabled as a result of a variety of chronic illnesses, and I’m very passionate about activism around disability rights and human rights in general. I am the middle child of 3, and I live with my wonderful support dog, Ollive, as well as 4 family cats (who are not fans of the dog!), so the house is seldom boring.
I couldn’t tell you when I first learned what Judaism was, but it was a long time ago. I went to a few b’nei mitzvahs throughout my childhood, and a Chanukkah party, but that was about it in terms of exposure to Jewish culture for a while. Around middle-school age, or maybe late elementary, I learned what the Shoah was, and it was then that I started feeling this strong pull. I needed to learn everything I possibly could about the Shoah, in the form of books, movies, and museums whenever we had the chance to travel near one.
When I was 14yo, my family went on a long trip across Europe, and we were able to visit many museums, the old Jewish quarters of the towns, and took a difficult trip to visit Dachau. It was a lot to take in, but I was learning so much and I never tired of learning.
Fast-forward several years later to when I was 18yo, I was experiencing an incredibly severe mental health crisis that resulted in 2 suicide attempts and 3 hospitalizations. I was so lost, I needed something to turn to spiritually, but being raised completely atheist, I didn’t know what that was. Those experiences started me on a road of spiritual searching, and as I live in a majority-Christian country, it was the first thing I started researching.
I bought a bible, I read the gospels and genesis, I watched YouTube videos and listened to podcasts, I attended a few services at different churches, but I wasn’t feeling connected to it and I simply just did not believe that what I was reading had happened. I felt very discouraged by these feelings, and sort of gave up for a while.
Then 2020 arrived. The pandemic started, and the world changed. Everything felt in such disarray, I was going to be voting in my first presidential election, and it felt like every time I opened my phone or turned on the TV I was facing more news of the world falling apart. My grandpa died and I didn’t get to say goodbye because I wasn’t allowed inside the hospital, we were facing devastating wildfires closer than ever before, and I was terrified every time I stepped out our front door in fear of Covid-19 taking me out because of being so high-risk.
Somewhere between March and September of that year, I picked up the Christianity stuff again and once again felt detached from it. But this time, I kept searching and quite by accident, read somewhere about conversion to Judaism. I was shocked! I hadn’t realized that it was possible to convert and become Jewish, but now that I knew it was possible, I dove into research and learning with a vengeance. I secretly bought books on my iPad, then some used ones through a Facebook group, then a study bible through amazon, and eventually got around to telling my grandma and then my parents about it. I had delayed this because I was feeling a lot of anxiety and didn’t want to face the judgment I was catastrophizing before I felt steady about my decision. But eventually, I was ready, and I needed financial support to take the Intro to Judaism class I wanted to (LOL), so the time had come to tell them. To my great relief, everyone was incredibly supportive and interested, and I got to sign up for the class.
The Intro to Judaism class was on Zoom due to the pandemic, which allowed me to take it at all (normally it is in-person at the American Jewish University in Los Angeles). It was an 18-week course taught by Rabbi Adam Greenwald (who was an amazing teacher!), covering about 1 topic per week in a 3-hour session. We started with the Bible and ended talking about modern-day Israel and all the history and information that came in between.
I adored the class and felt so passionately about everything I was learning. It absolutely strengthened my decision to convert and answered many questions I had about it.
My biggest takeaways from the class were that asking questions was practically a requirement of the religion, that atheist Jews exist, that you don’t need to read the bible literally, and that interpretations of god are very much on a spectrum. Rather than feeling like I was trying to make my values and ideas fit into a set dogma, instead, most of my values were already present in Judaism, and my beliefs and ideas already belonged in the belief system because there are so many different ways that Jews believe and practice.
I grew my library of Jewish materials, continued watching and learning, and a few weeks before Thanksgiving of this year, I finished the research on synagogues in my area and reached out to the educating Rabbi there. We scheduled a zoom meeting almost right away, and I’ve attended several Shabbat morning services there now. It feels like an awesome fit, and I love the community and people in it already! It is an egalitarian Conservative Jewish Synagogue, which is what I was looking for, and I’m very excited for the next steps.
I hope this blog might help some people who perhaps are in the same situation I was/am, but even if nobody reads this it will serve as my journal and documentation of this amazing journey I’m on!
Becoming Jewish 