For the occasional person who stumles on this blog, I am writing about the experience of learning Hebrew over at:
Come for the Hebrew, stay for the weight lifting.
Foxhill
Hello Internet,
As you can see, I don’t really update this blog anymore. I’m still a ger, still learning about Judaism, and still blogging, but I am focusing my energies on my bookish blog The Fox Hill Review. Over there I and some friends write about books and all things bookish. I often discuss books related to Judaism and Jewish history so if you want to follow my thoughts on this subject, hop on over there.
Progress
Yesterday I wrote a short post about how I hadn’t heard from my Rabbi about my conversion essay and then, hours after posting, I got a reply. Rabbi, are you reading my blog?
Anyway, he seemed to like the essay and had no real edits of it, so we’re on for a meeting with the Beit Din at the end of June. I’m considering posting my conversion essay here so others can get a sense of what one would look like. Look for that early next week.
The waiting is the hardest part
For me, the conversion process has been a lot of hurry up and wait. I submitted my conversion essay to my rabbi over a month ago and have yet to get any feedback on it. I spoke with him on the phone earlier this week, and he admitted not having looked at it. Passover and paying gigs got in the way. I understand. As of now, I am not in a terrible hurry, I mean, I would like to get this process underway, but with my wedding still a year away, I think I have time.
Interesting Gers: Jamaica Kincaid
This weeks interesting ger is Jamaica Kincaid, African American novelist, big time gardener, and convert to Judaism.
Kincaid who is probably most famous for her novels Lucy and Annie John hasn’t spoken much in public about her conversion. I read a number of pieces by Kincaid in college, but never once heard she was Jewish until I started doing research for this Interesting Gers project. It seems to be a very personal topic for her and she’s been quoted as saying “I don’t know why, but I do feel that God is a private issue.”
I believe, like Martha Nussbaum Kincaid’s conversion arose because of her marriage to a born Jew, in this case, Allen Shawn (of the famous in Manhattan Shawn family), but I could be wrong.
Though Shawn and Kincaid have divorced, Kincaid is still active in her Reconstructionist Shul in Vermont, reading her work at various services. Somehow it seems fitting that a woman who has had a life as interesting as Kincaid’s finds herself at home in a congregation which has an interesting history of its own.
Where my conversion stands
Since I stopped updating regularly here, I’ve taken substantial steps toward converting in the conservative movement. I’ll give you a recap of how all this went down.
First, around the time of my last post, I had started attending conversion class with a conservative rabbi h ere in the D.C. It was a great experience. The class was roughly half couples in the same situation as E and I, where one half of the couple was Jewish by birth and the other was considering conversion. (interesting note – I was the only man seeking conversion; in all the other couples it was the woman who was converting). The other half of the class was single woman going through the conversion process by themselves. The class was an overview of Jewish theology and tradition as well as a place to discuss the challenges faced in conversion. Issues of melding the families, handling Christmas, raising kids, etc. were discussed at length along with the rules of kasrut and how to pray the sh’ma. I gained an enormous amount from the class and now, two months after the class ended, I am still processing and attempting to remember all the information I learned there.
Converting to Judaism can be an overwhelming process. If you’re like me, you know the broad outlines of the faith, but there is so, so much to learn. It can seem daunting. Taking in the outlines of Judaism is a classroom environment was very helpful for me, and I’d recommend it to anyone else considering conversion. Working one on one with a rabbi (which is the stage I am in now) is essential, but I think if you’re starting from square one, a classroom setting is a good way to go.
As the class ended in February, I met with the Rabbi one on one. That conversation was both an examination of where I am in my journey and a discussion of next steps.
E and I are at this point living some of the traditions. We’re celebrating Shabbat when we can (E and I are often separated on Friday night due to her being in NYC and me being in DC), but we’re not regular members of a synagogue, and I cannot read Hebrew. Me learning Hebrew and us finding a shul in which we feel comfortable are the next concrete steps we need to take and I hope, if all goes according to plan, I’ll be going before the beit din by the end of the summer.
Five Months
Five months is a long time. A lot has happened, an awful lot.
At first I thought I would use this space to talk about the trials and tribulations of conversion. What worried me about the prospect and what excited me. But I got cold feet. By the third post, this blog was getting alot of hits and I got worried that in the relatively small world of people converting to Judaism in the D.C. area, someone in my conversion class, or even the rabbi with whom I am working, was going to run across it. So I clammed up. I took a conversion class and decided officially to convert. Throughout I kept my thoughts about the process to myself. Now, I think it is time to jump back in. I feel more confident about my conversion and less worried about who will know my concerns about the process. Today, I’d be happy to have the Rabbi I am working with read this blog.
My excitement about my conversion and about Judaism in general has never waned, and I thought this could be a good space to talk once again about Judaism, Jewish history, what it means to convert, and the mechanics of doing so.
So, hello again. I hope someone decides to read this thing.
Cathedrals in Time
Class this week was pretty amazing, the subject for discussion was the Sabbath, something E and I in our own way have been attempting to honor. We light candles, we say Kiddush, but we’re not shomer shabbas, and we don’t always get the candles lit by sundown. Still, you do what you can do. Readings included Abraham Joshua Herschel and Mordecai Kaplan (a lot more on these guys in upcoming posts).
The Herschel reading in particular with its envisioning of the Sabbath as a cathedral in time resonated with me. One of the things that distinguish Judaism from Catholicism is the portability of the religion, that celebration and observance are not dependent on the presence of a priest or of the building of a church. Ten Jews, some candles, and a torah and you’re good to go.
This portability definitely comes in part from oppression, from anti-Semitism and from having to hide. But Judaism is also a religion of abstraction, of ideas and history and words. Ritual is an important component, but few of those rituals depend on being within a specific place. Judaism is a religion you can take with you. Did the abstraction and heavy reliance intellectual thought that I associate with Judaism today develop because of oppression, or in addition to it? I have no idea, I’m no Jewish historian. At least not yet.
But the ability to take the religion with you and hold the ceremonies wherever one could resonated through this particular class, in part because of the abstract time based natures of the Sabbath, but also because of a Torah scroll the Rabbi brought to class. Little more than a foot and a half tall, it was the smallest Torah scroll I had ever seen. Rabbi’s cousin had bought it at a flea market in Japan of all places, and had spent thousands having it restored. It was a pretty special thing. From analyzing the way the scribe had formed the letters, they had been able to discern that the Torah had originated somewhere in Eastern Europe about a hundred to a hundred and fifty years ago, and that the scribe was either from, or had been trained by someone who was from, Czechoslovakia. Yeah, apparently they can track it down to that level of detail. Amazing. It was a beautiful object and an important thing, I felt honored to be able to be so close to it.
As I stood there in class, staring at this Torah Scroll and trying to imagine the journey it had taken from East Europe to Japan, I was moved by this religions ability to migrate and protect and create little cathedrals in time all over the world.
The nature of the convert.
As someone pursuing conversion, one of the things I find it important (and difficult) to balance between enthusiasm and fetishization and between interest and hobbyism*. I’m excited about Judaism, I love diving into new areas of study and this is an area of study big enough to keep me busy for the rest of my life, but as I get deeper into this I need to remember two things.
1. This isn’t like any of my other interests. This isn’t an interest, it is a change in life and it needs to be treated with a serious and rigor that I don’t often bring to interests. Becoming a Jew isn’t like getting interested in the rules of cricket. It is much, much more and I need to be aware of that.
2. I think it is easy in the first blush of conversion to get very wrapped up in all things Jewish and to almost fetishize the people and the culture. I do not want to do that. I want to remember that my excitement can be off putting, that it can appear that I am treating a living culture like an anthropology project – something to be analyzed and dissected. Judaism, especially certain aspects of the intellectual life Jewish life, are very exciting to me right now, but I have to realize that doesn’t mean that I can’t be offensive in how I discuss them or talk about them.
Additionally, I need to remember that being a Jew means a lot of different things to different people. Many of those ways of being Jewish will be something I will never understand or participate in. As an adult convert to Catholicism will never know what it felt like for me to be an altar boy, I’ll never understand what it means to grow up in a Jewish home. The experience of the convert is necessarily different and one should pretend that it is otherwise.
All that said, I’m learning a lot, and I am excited about where this is going. If I can stay self aware about how I handle this process, I think it is going to be great.
*I totally made that word up.
First Class
We had our first conversion class last night. I think it went very well. The Rabbi is a welcoming and thoughtful person. The breakdown of the class was as I expected – nine people six of whom were couples who were either married, engaged or considering getting married and three who were there by themselves. Everyone seemed excited, reasonably knowledgeable and friendly.
The class itself was very introductory, going over terminology, discussing the idea of peoplehood, etc. I found that while I had done the assigned reading, I hadn’t spent enough time thinking about some of the concepts and was at a loss to define ideas as simple as “holy”. We wrestled for a long time in the class with the idea of a people “set apart” or “chosen”. It’s a loaded subject, especially in a class full of people converting, and the Rabbi tried to walk a fine line with regards to it, emphasizing that translation isn’t meaning, and that “chosen” does not have to lead to a chauvinistic view of Judaism. He’s a smart and thoughtful guy; its going to be an interesting class.
Nom De Ger 