Emma Leslie is a self-driven religion and history enthusiast. She currently lives in Sydney, reads religious texts to unwind and thinks jokes about the eruption of Vesuvius are “too soon.”
I like talking with people who have changed religions. Here is one of them. Previously: Lurene Grenier.
Can you tell me a little bit about your religious background growing up? Did your parents talk much about their own faith, or take you to any religious services? When do you first remember being aware of the concept of God, and what did you think of it?
I am technically still in the process of converting to Judaism, but I should be done in December (I’m a solid way through, I started in October last year).
Well, I grew up Catholic — all my dad’s siblings have saint’s names, and my Nana refused to speak to my mum for a while after my brother was born because she spelled Mathew with one t so it didn’t count as a saint’s name. This is what happens when Irish and Italian Catholics marry each other.
When I was little we went to church every week, but I also know that we brought colouring books, so it’s not like they were overly invested in preschool-aged me paying attention. When we lived in the UK for four years, we never went to church, not once, but when we came back it was back to every week — I don’t know why that is. When I was about 11 or 12 I went through a phase of being a Good Catholic, bringing a missal to mass to follow along and playing flute at services. At some point after my Confirmation (when I was 12), we stopped going to church. It might be because I’d done all my sacraments? I’m not going to pretend my family’s religious practice makes sense to me. They identify strongly as Catholic, but these days they only attend church at Christmas and Easter.
I went to Catholic school, excelled in religious studies even though I convinced myself I was an atheist from fairly early on, and then my curiosity about the Jewish experiences of my (raised Orthodox) best friend turned into a desire to actually do it for myself. (I distinctly remember wanting to be a nun when I was in primary school, not because I was overly invested in God but because I didn’t want to get married. Tiny Emma had not considered being queer instead.)
I don’t remember when I first became aware of the concept of God, but I remember I was never really convinced. When my Granny died when I was eight, it was the first time someone I knew had died, and I remember being confused that a god would let that happen. It felt like I was missing something — that everyone else could feel the presence of God, maybe have a chat over a cup of tea, have proof that God existed. It was kind of like when you accidentally miss the first act of a play — everyone knows who everyone is and what’s going on, and just assumes you do, too. So I became an angry atheist, you know that particular Asshole Atheist sort.
As part of a progressive congregation I’ve finally found a place I belong in a way I never did in the Church. I am still agnostic, because for me Judaism isn’t really about God, it’s about the ritual and the community – which is a valid way to approach Jewishness because faith really doesn’t come into it all that much.
Yes! Oh, gosh, there is a word for people like that – Chreasters! (Christmas and Easter-only attendees, that is.) They’re a very sought-after group; every church is desperate to reel them in during their twice-yearly appearance.
Did you find that as you continued to grow up, your atheism continued to be motivated by anger, or was it tempered by something else? Was it something you spent a lot of time thinking about, or was it more of a one-and-done decision?
A fun Commonwealth Catholic-specific joke that you may not find funny because you are neither of those things: we call them “CandE Catholics,” as a play on CoE, Church of England. (There is a Jewish equivalent, High Holy Days Jews, who only turn up for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, to the point where synagogue attendance increases so dramatically there’s a ticket system.)
I think my atheism was mostly anger? The Church hated people like me – women, people who ask questions, lefties, queers, I was just a bundle of everything the Church doesn’t like. [I don’t know if you know this, but the Catholic Church does officially endorse political parties, at least in Australia, and here they endorse the conservative party because of a Red Scare thing that happened in the 1950s, it’s really interesting but obviously not what you’re asking me about, sorry. I just really love discussing what a huge impact that had on Australian politics for 20+ years.] I was angry that people like me had no power in the Church, were of no worth to the Church, were seen as lesser. But at the same time I kept exploring religions — I looked into Judaism a few years ago, actually, before deciding it was too steep a learning curve since I didn’t know anyone who could guide me through it at the time. Like many culturally Christian white atheists (I imagine), I flirted with Buddhism for a bit, but I wasn’t passionate about it in any way. I always told myself that one day, in the future, I would just sit down and Decide, once and for all, what my thoughts were about religion. That never happened, but it was very much in the back of my mind: the knowledge that I wasn’t done, I hadn’t arrived at my final destination in my religious journey. It was actually one of my ‘I’m sad because I have no religion and I crave ritual and structure’ mopes that prompted my best friend to offer Judaism to me — and here we are, a year later, and I spent ten straight hours without food or water at shul yesterday for Yom Kippur.
PS: the Hebrew for altar (מזבח) and the Hebrew for kitchen (מטבח) are only one letter different (mizbach vs. mitbach), which meant I was very confused when I mixed them up while listening to a Torah portion, and then I thought of the Toast’s series about replacing words in the Bible, and I laughed a lot. I don’t know if that actually ends up being funny when you do find and replace it, but if it does, you are welcome to use it.
That is the best joke I have ever heard.
It makes a lot of sense to me that your atheism would be, at least for a while, driven as much by resentment of awful church policies as anything else. I don’t know what it was like for you, but a lot of my own Young Atheism was more anti-church than it was pro-much of anything else (I got better, eventually, but I think there’s very much a place for anger in any cosmology.) Sometimes it takes a while to sort of depressurize from the religion of your youth before you can think more seriously and constructively about what sort of faith or worldview you would like to have.
It’s interesting that you mention a brief interest in Buddhism, which, yes, is super common among disaffected former Christians, I think. An aspect to conversion that can be lovely, I think, is the idea that you can examine other religions and find something to appreciate in all of them, but you encounter one in particular that sort of announces “home-ness” to you, if that makes any sense. What was it about Judaism that first compelled you? I know it’s not a faith that encourages proselytization, so that must have been interesting.
Yeah, Judaism really does feel like home. At first it was the appeal of highly ritualised structure and also the….comfort of praying in a language you don’t know, which sounds weird, but I felt that whenever Catholicism got its Latin on, too. The structure and ritual is really comforting to me, knowing there’s a script for when x, y and z happens, and also there are so many festivals. Christians have so few they have to awkwardly pretend Christmas in July is a thing (or is that just down in this hemisphere?). The Jewish calendar has a month, Cheshvan, that is nicknamed mar-Cheshvan (literally “bitter Cheshvan”) because there are no holidays. For a whole month.
As I did more research, the things that really struck me about Judaism were its position on sin and on questioning and argument. Sin isn’t really a bit thing in Judaism — there’s no idea of original sin, and the word for sin in Hebrew is related to ‘missing the mark’, as if you’re on track by default, unlike Christianity. There’s also no hell, but that’s more because Judaism’s official position on the world to come is basically an elaborate shrug. Judaism doesn’t like asceticism — and coming from a religious tradition where high officials still self-flagellate, that’s a big change for me. I love it. Also a really big change is that Judaism is all about asking questions. There’s a concept called ‘arguing for the sake of heaven’, where arguing about theology is encouraged and that’s literally the format of the Talmud. ‘There are seventy faces to the Torah’, the saying goes, meaning that there are an infinite number of correct interpretations. If you disagree with the Catholic Church, on the other hand, you’re a heretic, and you’re not encouraged to ask questions at all.
You’re right in that it’s not a proselytising religion, but weirdly enough I found that resources are really clear and easy to find. Most progressive Jewish synagogue’s websites will have a tab specifically about converting through their shul, what that entails and how to go about it. I couldn’t find anything about conversion on any of my local churches’ websites, in contrast, despite the fact that I know the Catholic conversion process is similar to Judaism’s. And because Jewish communities are so tight-knit, once you’re committed to converting people are really happy to help in any way they can. Honestly I am really struggling to explain this because I have very little to compare it to. In my Catholic parish we never (to my knowledge?) had any converts, proselytising wasn’t mentioned at all really. So I suppose the only way that aspect really influenced things was that there wasn’t the pressure that I would be doomed otherwise, because Judaism doesn’t think everyone else is going to hell.
I…did not realize they celebrated Christmas in July in Australia! Is that because it’s cold, then? More to the point: when you say progressive synagogues, do you mean Reform? I’m aware of the sort of three main branches of Judaism – Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform – but I don’t know how much room there is within those three branches for difference of opinion. Which tradition are you converting to?
A second question. It sounds like a lot of your movement toward Judaism was informed by how much you connected to its intellectual traditions. Has there been an emotional connection as well? Have you had anything you would characterize as a spiritual experience that’s led you in this direction (however you define ‘spiritual experience’)?
Honestly, the wiki page for Christmas in July explains it better than I ever could. It’s mostly just a gimmick, honestly. Anyway.
Progressive is basically the umbrella term for non-Orthodox movements (though it sometimes doesn’t include Conservative Judaism, it depends on the context), but it also gets kind of complicated outside North America because different countries have different flavours and related movements? So, for instance, in the UK a Reform synagogue would more closely resemble an American Conservative synagogue, whereas a UK Liberal synagogue is a better analogue to US Reform. In Australia we call ourselves Reform but we’re much closer to the Conservative end of things than the average US Reform synagogue because of historical reasons and politics and such. Sorry, it’s weird and complicated and I don’t even understand it 100%. (I don’t think anyone does.) I’m converting Reform, but to standards that would satisfy the Conservative movement because the head rabbi of my shul is Conservative. Honestly, I don’t really see eye to eye with either of them and I’m more comfortable with the Reconstructionist label, but that doesn’t exist outside of the US, so I’m happy to go with progressive/Reform for now. (If that answer is waaaaay too complicated, I totally understand, and feel free to say I’m converting Reform and I’m calling it Progressive because of the difference between movements outside the US.)
In terms of differences of opinion, Orthodoxy has its own groups within it that follow their own leaders and rules, Conservative Judaism has a central governing body that issues binding rulings, and the Reform movement has a central governing body but its rulings aren’t binding, so there’s a lot more room there.
I’ve had an emotional connection, yes, but I don’t know if it’s spiritual. Part of it is just getting emotionally attached to the community — knowing everyone, whose daughter is getting married, who’s just become a grandparent, and my shul was so welcoming and eager to adopt me that it felt like home from very early on. Honestly though I don’t think it’s spiritual — I find prayer (as in, set prayers) comforting like I do the rituals, and I suppose sometimes, when there’s no one else there and it’s just me and the ner tamid (the light that always stays on in the sanctuary), it does feel….shul does feel different from elsewhere. Perhaps there’s something there. I’m agnostic in the sense that if there is a God, I believe God would be totally non-interventionist, so it kind of doesn’t matter? But I like the idea of God being life itself — that elusive thing that makes the difference between a lump of meat and a living thing. When I say blessings, I’m just expressing wonder at the fact that life exists in all its amazing variety, that I’m alive right now to experience it. That’s what I get from religious practice — a framework through which to express wonder and remember that it’s amazing that I’m alive, that flowers smell beautiful, that mangoes are delicious.
I have genuinely learned something today! And that’s a really lovely, helpful way of looking at things. I love talking to someone who’s converted but also considers themselves agnostic – you hear the expression ‘with the zeal of the converted’ and often tend to think that converts must be very gung-ho about their own definition of God, so it’s lovely to hear about your experience, where you’ve found a religious community you want very much to be a part of, but don’t necessarily have a certain, fixed idea of what God is.
We’re getting quite close to your actual conversion date! Can I ask you a bit about what that process looks like? It’s so interesting to me, because, you know, in most Christian traditions, you can pray a certain prayer and bam, you’re in. Maybe you get baptized, but it’s all very quickly done. In Islam, I believe, you make the proclamation of faith, and you’re a Muslim. I like the idea that you’ve picked a future date to become Jewish, and that it requires a community recognition, and a set of rituals.
The process before the beit din differs between movements, so I’m not speaking for all Jewish conversion experiences, only the ones under the Australian Progressive moetzah. (Generally, the vast majority of Progressive conversions will look like this, but Orthodox ones will look very different.) Before I can go before the beit din, I have to experience a full cycle of festivals and a full year of Judaism 101 classes, taught usually by the rabbi in classroom style. I then have to pass three exams – I’ve already passed one of them, which is very exciting. There’s a take-home exam, which is very much about your personal feelings and journey, primarily, which the beit din read over before they see you. Then there’s a closed book exam which is mostly facts – vocabulary, Biblical figures, that kind of thing. And then finally you get to the beit din, which is a rabbinical court. Three rabbis sit in a room and grill you, basically. There are some set questions that are ritualistic – “Do you understand that being tied to the Jewish people means antisemitism,” “Do you accept that there is only one God,” and then there are questions that are up to the beit din. For instance, my take-home asked me my feelings about Israel, and my rabbi said that the beit din would probably take issue with what I wrote. Apparently sometimes the beit din has asked a prospective convert’s position on Jesus and had to reject them because they still believed Jesus was the son of God. Ultimately the beit din are the final arbiters of whether or not you are allowed to become officially Jewish. They’re not trying to fail you, obviously, and you can be deemed not ready and try again at a later date, but that’s certainly the most intimidating part of the whole process. So let’s say the beit din gives you the go ahead, then you go to a mikvah, which is basically any body of “natural” water. Usually these days it’s a bit like a swimming pool, tiled and indoors, but since the only mikvah in my city is strictly Orthodox, my shul uses the sea. You go into the mikvah completely naked (including nail polish) so that there’s no barrier between you and the water – you even have a shower beforehand and scrub under your nails and everything. You dunk three times and say a specific blessing, and then once you emerge from the mikvah, you’re Jewish. This isn’t a communal thing – as you are naked for the whole process, it’s usually just you and the mikvah attendant who double checks you did it correctly while trying not to look at your naked body.
Also, if you have a dick, you have to be circumcised, but that bit does not apply to me. The beit din, the mikvah, and the circumcision if applicable are the actual official bits of the conversion process, with everything else just being a structured way to prepare you for the beit din decided upon by your community.
After that, you’re as Jewish as someone who was circumcised at eight days old, so there’s no real official communal celebration after that, but you generally get a special call up to the Torah the first Shabbat after your conversion because, hey, you can do that now! And obviously there are often informal celebrations with the community because they’re your friends. It’s a difficult line to straddle because Jewish law emphasises that a convert is exactly as Jewish as any born Jew as soon as they’ve been to the mikvah, and you’re not supposed to draw attention to the fact that someone’s converted because that would be treating them differently. On the other hand, it’s a happy occasion worthy of celebration.
I think a significant thing to keep in mind is that celebration is more of a constant thing – when someone has an honour in a service, so if they read a prayer or say a blessing in front of everyone or open the curtain in front of the Torah scrolls – everyone congratulates them and shakes their hand on the way back to their seat. For opening a curtain! So while you don’t necessarily get a big celebration, now that you can have honours, you’re going to get congratulated every time you participate in a service.
This series continues to be my new favorite thing on The Toast, and this one hits particularly close to home. My husband converted Orthodox and is an Orthodox rabbi, and still isn’t sure he believes in God on any given day, as opposed to a general guiding force of “The Universe” out there. I’m also learning Jewish studies with a woman who is preparing for her conversion, so I really appreciate Emma’s perspective as another window into the experience. There’s a concept in Judaism of “If it’s not right now for the sake of heaven, it will soon be for the sake of heaven,” (im eino lishma, ba lishma) meaning that if a belief doesn’t come easily to you right now, keep practicing Judaism and learning and it will come. And if it doesn’t, meh, welcome to the community.
I opened this story and yelled “yes! That’s a mikveh!” Happily, I was alone in my living room when I did it.
I’m in the process of figuring out my relationship to Judaism. Thank you for sharing your story, Emma, and thank you for doing the interview, Mallory.
Your parents’ religious practices are hardly a contradiction. CEOs are a strong Catholic tradition.
that pun was a STRETCH and I loved it
It’s not even my pun, it’s just the Established Nickname For Gentle Ribbing Of Cultural Catholics. There are entire websites for the really bad Catholic jokes; some of them have been aging for millennia like a fine wine.
I identify so strongly with the ways that you talk about Judaism, Emma. I was raised in a pretty liberal US-Conservative shul, and currently attend an independent minyan that calls itself “traditional egalitarian” and is made up of people from all over the spectrum who like full women’s participation and super-traditional styles of prayer. And Judaism, for me, is all about ritual and community. I don’t have a clue if Gd is there or not–I just know that I care about saying the same prayers my people have been saying forever with people who care about each other. Thank you for sharing your story, Emma.
(I distinctly remember wanting to be a nun when I was in primary school, not because I was overly invested in God but because I didn’t want to get married. Tiny Emma had not considered being queer instead.)
Oh my god, my teenage unknowingly-bisexual self had the exact same weird nun-impulse. (Partially this had to do with my misconception that as a nun I wouldn’t have to make a lot of choices or face much uncertainty, two things I hate, but mostly the sex thing.) I’ve never heard of anyone else who had a similar experience. Thanks for sharing this whole story, I loved reading it!
Petition for a Femslash Friday on “The Trouble with Angels”!
Haha, yes! I love your handle, by the way! Is it a combination of “frumious” and “Furiosa”?
Thanks! It’s actually “frum” = Jewishly observant + Furiosa
Oooof. This one is probably the closest to home for me from this series- I was raised Episcopalian, went to Catholic School, became Angry Atheist, am currently Let’s Not Talk About It Because It’s Complicated Agnostic. But I have loved the tradition/holiday/secular Judaism bits, and I LOVED when I had friends who would invite me to Seders (and I always went to Seders in college!). And now basically everyone I’d feel comfortable *asking* for a Seder invite lives too far away for that to be reasonable. I mean, it’s not something I see as *mine*, but I certainly don’t see Christian holidays as mine either these days.
So I think I’m just biding my time until one of my closer Jewish friends moves back, or I (naturally, not just because they’re Jewish) become closer again with one of my more local Jewish friends……. Which is sort of terrible but also sort of not.
Also:
*the pull quote looks NIFTY.
*the tags/category are GREAT
*I LOVE THE TOAST AND ALSO MALLORY EVEN IF I HAVE BEEN MAKING GENTLE FUN RECENTLY (but she did GREAT on this one)
WHO HAS BEEN MAKING GENTLE FUN OF ME
ME. REGARDING TAGS AND CATEGORIES. FOR, LIKE, TWO DAYS IN A ROW.
oh i must have missed that sorryyyy
Aw! If you live/end up anywhere near the Boston area on Passover, you are welcome to my seder, where we will turn the Four Questions into Hamiltonian rap battles!
…………………….. I very much might take you up on this one.
Let me check to be sure (I generally cohost with my SIL), but personally, I really love having people of different faiths at Passover. (Also, feel free to email me at reebchan (at) gmail.com)
Um hi I’m walking over. We can do second night at my house.
Ladies and gentlemen, you could have been anywhere in the world tonight, but you’re here with us at a Passover seder. The question on the table: why is this night different fromm all other nights?
eff yeah
I squeaked with joy
Moses, that was a real nice declaration, welcome to Goshen, we’re surviving real slavery. Would you like to join us or stay mellow, doing whatever the hell it is you do inside the palace?
I obviously am not going to hold you to an invite made this many months in advance, but I have totally snoozed the email notification of your comment until April, at which point I will totally awkwardly email you to see if things are such that this still makes sense!
I will remember and also be awkward! For some people it’s a big family holiday, but for others it is _the_holiday to reach out to others — one of the opening parts is “let all who are hungry come and eat” — so even if a greater Boston Toast Hamilton Passover doesn’t work out, I really hope you will be able to find a seder where you find that comfort.
Gosh, the whole business of Christians not having enough holidays sounds so peculiar — in Eastern Orthodox observance (as well as that of stricter Catholics), I believe July is the only month without a major feast.
Let’s see if I can get this right without peeking too many times: September has the Elevation of the Cross, October has a few apostles and the Protection of the Mother of God, November has the Presentation of the Mother of God, December has Christmas, January has Epiphany/Theophany, February has the Presentation of the Lord, March has the Annunciation, April and May are in the cycle of Lent, Holy Week and Easter, June usually has the Ascension, July is sad, and August has the Transfiguration and Dormition.
Note, however, the retention of a sad month with no special holidays.
I have to say that moving to a Catholic region where there are only about two weeks between March and May where you don’t get at least one holiday seriously makes me question the success of the Reformation: why would you give that up????? (Says the person raised atheist by parents who were respectively a lapsed Jew and a several-generations lapsed episcopalian)
Yes to all of this from the Byzantine Catholic section. The calendar currently hanging in the kitchen is one I requisitioned from the Ascension of Out Lord church in Williamsburg and it not only your standard day/month/federal holiday deal, but also a martyrology. SO MANY HOLIDAYS. Today is Paraskevia’s (martyr) day.
(I’m particularly fond of the Presentation of the Theotokos cause it’s also my birthday. Y’all best believe I lord that over my born the next day sister.)
The ritual and tradition and history have always been such a massive part of my life and family -even when they went through their C&E phase, or when going to Roman churches for lack of anything else- that I always have to sort of readjust myself and remember that most don’t have that. It is so much easier to feel more in tune when everything is in Slavonic and there is a set form and the bells and gold and incense and icons really do bring everything to that other level of ‘this is a special time in a special place and nothing is ordinary or everyday.’ Even as a kid my favorite part of Christmas wasn’t Christmas Day, but all the traditions associated with the wigilia on Christmas Eve.
And June has the Nativity of St John the Baptist, on the 25th, deliberately opposite Christmas near the solstice.
I mean, they tidied up the Roman calendar in the 20th century, because having fully a third of the days be a holiday was considered overkill and unworkable for Catholics in non-Catholic countries, but there are still plenty.
But I’ve often wondered if Australian Catholicism is weird. Every time I hear about a strange Catholic cult getting excommunicated and running compounds in the wilderness, it’s always Australian.
“I am still agnostic, because for me Judaism isn’t really about God, it’s about the ritual and the community.” This line really spoke to me, as someone who was born Jewish. It’s never really been about God for me, but I will always consider myself Jewish and feel connected to it, because for me it’s about the traditions, the ritual, my family, and community.
Jewish law emphasises that a convert is exactly as Jewish as any born Jew as soon as they’ve been to the mikvah
I have to comment on this bit… I personally have always believed that, and always considered that true; I was raised in a Conservative synagogue personally. However I have an Aunt on my mother’s side, who married an Orthodox Jewish man, and is now very, very Orthodox Jewish. She is strict to the point that out of all of my cousins (my mother has two brothers with siblings), she only considers my sister and I to be Jewish. This is because in the Jewish faith, it’s Matrilineal, aka it’s passed down through the mother… and my cousins mother’s were not (born) Jewish. One of them converted (at marriage, before the children were born), but she still does not consider them to be Jewish. I’ve never been sure if this is just an Orthodox belief… or because she’s an awful person.
(She really is kind of awful, tbh. She literally never communicated with them, called them, sent them presents, etc, like she did us. But she’s awful about a lot of things, for example, she stopped speaking to my mother when she married my non-Jewish father, and only re-opened the lines of communication when my mother had my sister and I. When I married my now-ex-husband, a non-Jew, she stopped speaking to me until I got a divorce. We don’t speak.)
Anyway, I digress a lot. This was a really lovely story, and it was great to read about someone finding a home within the Jewish faith. Mazel tov to you!
I want to vote that this is primarily because your aunt is an awful person, just saying. Because fuck anyone who wants to judge another person’s Jewish-ness. Hell, I go to a minyan that claims to be “traditional egalitarian” and we had LONG halachic arguments when deciding whether women could take the first two aliyot (sets of blessings on Torah readings, “being called to the Torah,” first two are traditionally reserved for patrilineal descendants of the priestly families) but we would never ever think to judge whether a person is Jewish or not. They come to us and say they’re Jewish, we’re all good.
Yeah that’s my thought, but honestly I’ve never been sure and I don’t really want to spend the time researching it because it’s just upsetting in general, idk.
On the more positive side, my synagogue was pretty liberal as a Conservative Synagogue and they let women take the first two aliyot, which was nice! (Also the current rabbi is a feminist, she was one of the women arrested in Israel a few years ago for praying at the Wall, along with Sarah Silverman’s sister.)
My minyan lets women take those aliyot also – they’re called up as “bat cohen” or “bat levi,” which is my preference anyway. YAY for awesome liberal Jewish communities!
I know your rabbi! Sorry if that sounds creepy. But I used to work at the JCC the next town over and had her in to speak for us at a panel on Jewish pluralism.
No, that’s not creepy, haha! She’s a really wonderful Rabbi. She gave a great sermon on Rosh Hoshanah about donating to the Syrian refugees. Kind of makes me wish I was a “true” member of the synagogue, but it’s too far away for me now. (They moved and merged with another synagogue, about a 30-45 min drive form me). I’m a “High Holidays Only Jew” now, oops.
Agreed that it is your aunt being a terrible person…but, sadly, one with support in a lot of Jewish households. I grew up in a Conservative (Progressive really is a better word for it) household but attended an Orthodox day school, and my mom/various other people would be very clear that you had to be the Right Half to be “really” Jewish. I didn’t really think about this until I was working at a Hillel, a prospective student said “I’m half-Jewish, but I’m the wrong half,” and I realized all of a sudden just how shitty of a label that is and how terrible it is to put that label on other people.
Yeah, the right-half/wrong-half thing is always really terrible when you think about it. The addition of my Aunt not counting my converted Aunt as Jewish only makes it worse, tbh. I mean it’s bad enough to not think of them as Jewish in the “right way”, but then to not really consider them family because of it is super awful.
My mom once told me, after I had finally told her I was dating a non-Jewish guy (which she had threatened to disown me over), “I just keep thinking, what would Mrs. Weasley do if one of her kids married a Muggle?”
I stared at her wide-eyed and said, “Mom, Mrs. Weasley wouldn’t care. You know who would care? Mrs. Malfoy.”
I ended up marrying a Jewish man (who is awesome!) but couldn’t do a big family wedding because it felt so false: people would celebrate my wedding because his mother or maternal grandmother was one religion but not another didn’t deserve to come.
Uuuuuuuugh. I totally get that, because said awful-Aunt did that when I got married to a non-Jew. There are a lot of things about Judaism that I like (especially the more progressive versions), but it is definitely not without faults. At least, IMO, it feels like it has a lot less faults than some other religions but maybe I’m biased, haha.
But yeah the way some especially strict Jewish people can sometimes treat people in relation to the Non-Jewish thing can be really… uncomfortable.
For whatever it’s worth this OrthoJew thinks every person in your family is as Jewish as fucking Tevye.
Seriously though, even if your aunt (and many like her, unfortunately) believe that, why do they feel the need to share it? Who cares what one denomination thinks about another’s “Jewish status”? If it bothers you, don’t join or marry into that denomination. End of story. Literally how else is it your problem or business?
I kind of want to get a t-shirt that says, “Jewish as fucking Tevye” now.
This is the position I’ve ultimately ended up taking with my Jewish bona fides. Because I had a Conservative conversion (that meets the requirements laid out in the Shulchan Aruch, incidentally, minimal as they are), I’ve run into a number of people, both Orthodox and not, “helpfully” informing me, “You know that Orthodox Jews don’t consider your conversion valid, right?” First, yes, I know. Second, given that I have no plans to join an Orthodox shul or marry an Orthodox man any time soon, why should I care? I don’t bring my conversion status up super often, because it’s really no one’s business but my own unless I’m about to marry someone or get counted in an aliyah (which wouldn’t happen in an Orthodox community, anyway, since I’m a woman), but when it comes up and that’s one of the responses, I can’t help but give that person a huge amount of side eye. It seems like the only reason someone would say it is to either be hurtful or in a weird attempt to reaffirm their own “genuine” Jewishness. Blegh.
In any case, thank you for such a refreshing response.
Oh man, thank you for raising this issue!! I was raised in an American Reform synagogue and I was also adopted at 3 days old. My birth parents were (presumably) not Jewish, and I had a baby naming ceremony, but I was not officially “converted” as an infant, with the mikvah and all that. Rather, my progressive and amazing rabbi said to my parents, “listen, she is an infant and she is YOUR daughter and you are raising her here in this community and that is all we need.” It was only when I got older that I realized that many stricter Jews don’t see me as Jewish both because of that, and also because I’m American Reform. I loved my shul and my community but this exclusionary sense of who gets to be Jewish turned me off so immensely that I have largely drifted away as an adult. For all those Awful Aunts who lament the decline of the Jewish faith, I wish they could see that it’s only a problem if you decide to be a strict arbiter of who is and is not Jewish. Sorry, guys, I have a lot of feels and didn’t say this terribly well, but THANK YOU for raising this point!
Yes, this persisting idea that so many Conservative & Orthodox Jews have about the matrilineal line has been a major factor in the separation I feel from my Jewishness after moving away from my childhood Reform synagogue. We Jews LOVE to talk about how we’ve been oppressed and shut out for hundreds and hundreds of years (which, yes, true), but when people then turn around and do the same thing to their own community, it makes my blood boil.
I appreciated what Emma said about the nature of Judaism being to question and learn — in a few places, I’ve seen that. In others, Jews can be just as stuck in their ways as any religion. Traditioooooon, tradition!
1) Your Aunt is Terrible
2) There are theological reasons for it. Judaism is indeed matrilineal (for Conservative and Orthodox Jews), and the mom would have to convert before the kids are born. The problem is that there’s sort of a down the totem pole type mentality. Many Orthodox Jews won’t accept the conversions of Conservative or more liberal Orthodox rabbis, Conservative Jews might not accept the conversions of a Reform rabbi, and so on. So if your Aunt is Orthodox, and your other aunt’s conversion wouldn’t “count” to her because it wasn’t done by an Orthodox rabbi. And I DESPISE this about the current Jewish community. But regardless, your aunt is a shitty person for not treating her nieces/nephews like family.
Just for the record, it’s really rare these days for a Conservative community not to accept a Reform conversion. The only instances where I’ve heard of it happening were when the Reform conversion didn’t include mikvah, beit din or (for men) hatafat dam brit. And even then, the rabbis I know would have enough sense to treat the issue sensitively and compassionately.
All that being said, the constant arguing about who’s a “real” Jew is infuriating and disheartening, particularly when the actual halacha surrounding conversion requirements, as laid out in the Shulchan Aruch, is incredibly, incredibly minimal. Orthodox communities could absolutely accept converts from other denominations (at least those whose batei din were comprised of male rabbis) were they to take a lenient view- the fact that they don’t is a political statement more than anything else.
My grandmother (born in Galicia in 1904) used to say that converts to Judaism were always secretly working to turn their children Christian. I don’t know how widespread this belief was among her contemporaries, and I certainly don’t agree with it, but I can see how someone from her background might have been suspicious about a convert’s motivations.
Ugh yes this! My family not really religious in the “god is real” sense, but I was raised interfaith and we do all the major jewish and christian holidays. Particularly because my father’s side of the family is really the only side we spoke to, I always considered myself at least jew-ish and was kind of shocked to learn that other people didn’t?
The debate on patrilineality and intermarriage always seems to bring out really yucky genetic determinism tones VS judiasim as, as emma so excellently put it, “the ritual and the community.”
I learned so so much and this was really good. I especially love the perspective from Australia, since I did not know any of the differences between reform vs. conservative vs. progressive Judaism across countries.
Also, the Church and Easter Only (CEO) part made me laugh. I highly recommend the recent Blackish episode about church. It comes up and is a delightful episode.
“Speaking culturally….“
We used to hear “A&P” Catholics – from Advent to Pentecost, then drift away during the summer.
This was a very interesting read, thank you.
Also, for reference, “C&E Catholic” is a term I’ve heard in the Northeastern United States.
“Jack, I hope you’re not one of those CONVENIENCE Catholics who only goes to church every Sunday.”
I love this series! So much thoughtfulness and curiosity in the questions, and openness in the responses.
Oh, wow. Emma, are you me in an alternate reality?
I’ve always wanted to convert to Judaism. Raised Lutheran, currently agnostic, forever queer. I actually started exploring conversion when I was seriously dating an observant Jew, but we broke up and I moved away from the synagogue I’d found, and it all fell apart from there. I wish I had gone through with it, or could pick it back up, but without the connection to the community my ex had provided, I just feel like an interloper. I know, for myself, that the pull I feel towards Judaism is something real, but it’s hard to hang onto that, publicly and openly, without any backup. Maybe someday conversion will seem less impossible, or I’ll be determined enough to get through it, but in the meantime I’ll just be over here relating to every single thing in this piece.
Oh man! If you ever want to chat about it, I can give you heaps of resources and I might know a person who knows a person who is related to a person who goes to your closest synagogue, because that’s always how it works. You can email me at dropbearemma [at] gmail if you fancy! I hope everything works out for you, alternate me.
I converted to Judaism this past summer along with my mother and sister (my dad was raised Jewish, so the question of whether I “counted” as Jewish already was kind of up in the air). I gotta say, my beit din was nowhere near that rigorous! No “exams” or need for technical knowledge. And the rabbinical court was basically just to ascertain that we knew what we were getting into and definitely wanted it.
Other than that, I have nothing to add bc this perfectly describes the appeal of Judaism for me (the ritual, the community, the fact that mostly they don’t care what your conception of G-d is), though I wasn’t raised in any religion at all.
I was raised UU and always found it TOO secular. Every question I asked was answered with “what do YOU think?” I have long felt a certain affinity/fondness for what i know of the Jewish tradition. This has me considering visiting my local temple. Thanks for sharing.
If you need moral support or resources or advice or anything, feel free to email me at dropbearemma [at] gmail, yeah? I mean, there will be lots of “Well, what do YOU think?” in Torah study at shul because it’s so open to interpretation, but not quite so much as UU.
Thanks a lot! I do enjoy discussion and I’m definitely not looking for some hard-line dogma. Being raised UU I think really prevents one ever from being able to follow unquestionably.
Thank you so much for this! I love this series so much. It’s fascinating and deeply comforting to see all of the different conversion stories as I go through my own faith transition. This one is especially great. I identify strongly with Emma’s description of her feeling that she was everything her church didn’t like (I was raised Mormon, so just being a woman and a liberal and questioning the church puts me on that list), and this gives me hope that I will be able to find where I belong. Right now, I’m kind of at this point: “Sometimes it takes a while to sort of depressurize from the religion of your youth before you can think more seriously and constructively about what sort of faith or worldview you would like to have.” So reading how Emma got past the anger (which is all I feel right now) and found a religious home is so incredibly comforting.
YES to everything. This weekend I was trying to explain to my dad how I experience sexism in the church I grew up in… and also trying to not be my most angry agnostic self… this was so so comforting.
This was so lovely. Thank you for sharing.
Co-signing those who say this is their favorite Toast series. Really hoping for a follow-up with a compare/contrast of all the different initiation rites and experiences!
This is really interesting, thank you! I hope the rest of your conversion process goes well.
I find it very interesting that you talk about being drawn to the religion for the sense of community and ritual rather than as a matter of faith, and remaining agnostic; while I can see the appeal of those aspects of religion, I don’t think I would be able to reconcile a lack of belief with choosing to practice a religion, as to me the actual articles of belief are the core part of it, with other stuff just being trappings. (I do not and do not think I am likely to believe in a higher power of any sort, so I would not feel comfortable involving myself in any sort of religious community, even if there are other aspects that I would like to experience.) Do you know if this is a thing that comes up at the beit din stage, in terms of asking about your belief in God?
It might! There is an official Reform position on this: https://ccarnet.org/responsa/tfn-no-5754-15-147-1… But in a not-specific-to-my-beit-din sense, there’s definitely a precedent for non-traditional conceptions of God that veer towards the agnostic — http://www.jewishrecon.org/resource/how-can-recon…
Thank you, those links are really interesting! All the best of luck with the rest of the conversion process, and I hope it brings you a lot of happiness.
“But I like the idea of God being life itself — that elusive thing that makes the difference between a lump of meat and a living thing. When I say blessings, I’m just expressing wonder at the fact that life exists in all its amazing variety, that I’m alive right now to experience it.”
I don’t know that I’ve heard someone else express this before, and you say it so beautifully. This is exactly how I feel (and how I reinterpret religious services to relate to them). Thank you! I loved this whole thing.
Also, Reconstructionism ftw.
Oh goodness same same same I feel the pull as well but have never been able to convince myself to actually seriously look into it.
Yeah, I've been fascinated all my life but it wasn't until I started regularly attending services with my ex that I realized I actually wanted to convert. I miss it a lot, but it's so hard to walk into another community's space without common ground! (It's also hard to take the train for more than an hour before 10am on a Saturday, to the synagogue I used to attend.)
I am so bummed I missed this when it first came out!
I was raised without much religious tradition – we celebrated Christmas and Easter in a very secular way, but I never really felt like “these are my family traditions” (side note – sometimes around holidays teachers in school would give “extra credit” questions about family holiday traditions and I always hated those because I never felt like I had a good answer, and one [asshole] teacher once actually had the nerve to QUESTION what I said was my favorite holiday food). So one of the things that I have always found interesting and enviable about Judaism was that connection – Jews have been celebrating the same holidays and praying the same prayers for thousands of years, and that community exists world wide. (Which reminds me of how in my class on the history of Christianity we talked about how the communal nature of Judaism was actually one of the things that made Christianity appealing to Gentiles who maybe didn’t want to be circumcised but DID want to feel connected and a part of something)
When I was dating a Jewish boy that I thought I might marry I did some research on conversion, but since I felt like I would have to lie to have an Orthodox conversion, and our kids would be Jewish under Reform traditions, I decided it probably wasn’t worth it. Also, I don’t think I could ever give up Christmas.
“I was angry that people like me had no power in the Church, were of no worth to the Church, were seen as lesser.”
I have begun to call the exclusion of women and queer people from church leadership taxation without representation. We’re expected to show up and tithe and give of our time for free, but we can’t have anyone who represents us in leadership? Haha nope.
Great story, glad you shared it with us.
Emma’s comment about the Hebrew word related to “missing the mark” is especially interesting because that is actually what the GREEK word translated as “sin” in the New Testament means too — hamartia. It’s the same term that is translated as “fatal flaw” when speaking about Aristotles’ views of the Greek tragic hero. Too bad it’s acquired such negative baggage.
Really enjoying this series, and I found this one I missed through a link from the newest one.
Jewish law if fairly clear on the legitimacy of conversion. Remember the story of Ruth and "wherever you go, I will go" is a story of conversion. But where the issues get divisive is the different denominational beliefs about what needs to happen in a conversion for it to be legitimate. Your aunt probably doesn't accept the legitimacy of the cousins' mothers conversions because a lot of Orthodox only accept Orthodox conversions as legitimate.
There's also different beliefs about whether children of Jewish fathers/non-Jewish mothers raised in a Jewish home need a formal conversion or not. I know Orthodox would not accept such children without conversion and Reform does, but I'm not sure what the other denominations' current stance is.
Me too! I was raised Mormon and prayer became a constant OCD compulsion. There's a prominent former Mormon named John Dehlin who's done a lot of research on scrupulosity and OCD triggered by religion. It's fascinating and painfully familiar stuff.