It’s frighteningly easy to overlook things as you move on in life. We’ve all left something in a hotel room on our way out the door, locked our keys in the car on our way to work, or neglected to send a friend’s birthday card on time.
So it’s only natural that I overlooked something in my journey as well. Perhaps it was wishful thinking that I wouldn’t have to deal with negative attitudes towards my decision to embrace Judaism. We all, unfortunately, know the sad truths about anti-Semitism, racism, discrimination, hate, and stereotyping. But those are things that don’t happen here, we think – they happen "over there." And perhaps it was my naïveté to the closeness of these negative energies that blinded me to the undertones of others’ attempts to stifle my ambitions.
Argument One: "You’re not really Jewish."
By nature of my upbringing, and also the decisions my mother made when it came to conversion, some try to stifle me by stripping me of my Judaism. My mother didn’t have an Orthodox conversion, so I’m not really Jewish to my Orthodox friends. This may be true. But until the decision comes down from the rabbinical court in the next few weeks, I’m not worried. And even if it is true that my mother’s conversion wasn’t halachically sound enough for me to be completely received by the Orthodox community, I have every faith that my Orthodox friends will assist me in any way possible as I try to settle into whichever denomination I feel I belong. "Once a Jew, always a Jew," my rabbi told me last week, and I’m not going to let a technicality tell me otherwise.
Argument Two: "You didn’t grow up Jewish; you don’t understand."
I wasn’t raised Jewish, so I can never have the same cultural feelings as other Jews my age. I disagree. I may take pride in my Italian motivations to smother my food in garlic and survive solely on carbohydrates, but my Italian-Catholic upbringing didn’t isolate me completely from Jewish culture. I may have only been immersed in it during the summers, when we spent time visiting family friends at the Jersey shore, but I was never in a position to be an outsider to basic, secular Jewish culture. I’m reminded of a ski trip I took at age six, when I gave up on the sport before even reaching the slopes because I didn’t want to "schlep my skis." I may have been a latecomer to bagels with lox, but I was a fussy eater until I turned 20 anyway.
Argument Three: "You’re making a mistake by choosing to be a Jew."
I understand that not everyone can fully grasp the magnitude of my decision to embrace Judaism. But to argue that I’ve made a mistake is disheartening. Some have said that now is a terrible time to be a Jew, with allusions to my naïveté as a basis for clearly not understanding the true plight of Jewishness. Every culture, religion, and way of life has its strong suits and its unpleasantries. I don’t do convention – I’m the proud product of a single-parent home, for one thing, and I fail to see what is so overwhelmingly detrimental about my rearing. I understand that embracing Judaism means taking the good and the bad. I never assumed this process would be easy, even knowing that I have it much easier than most Jews-by-Choice. If I had been seeking an easy way to explore my faith, I wouldn’t have uprooted my entire religious upbringing to read books and take classes and attend worship services I often don’t understand. All Jews, I think, struggle to some degree to continue to learn and better ourselves. And that’s just for the immensely positive quality of knowledge. Conversely, I also understand that, as a Jew, I may need to explain myself or defend my views more frequently than I did before, or to deal with jokes made by friends who think they’re innocent with quips about bagels, Hebrew, Moses, or how the "second half" (New Testament) of the Bible "gets better." And there’s more to it than that, of course. But I understand that, as with anything, it is impossible to reap the benefits without accepting the pitfalls.
And so, for better or for worse, I am proud to be a [new] Jew [by choice]. Coming soon with no disclaimers.