Hello; I can think of nowhere else to share these ruminations, and so I am presenting them here. Pardon me if I write long and ramble much – I am hardly equipped to grapple with what I have been feeling now for some months. Let me tell you my story and why I am here writing this today.
I am a twenty-five year old man from an agricultural town in the northeastern US. I was raised Catholic and was devout as a child and I never knew any Jews or anything about Judaism. Naturally, as many young Catholics are wont to do, I slipped away from the fold and was never confirmed. After being a latent atheist (more out of ignorance and lack of religious guidance than anything) for my teen years, I became again a devout Christian, studying the teachings of Jesus and living by them.
This prompted me to live by the words “consider the birds of the air, neither do they reap nor do they sow nor do they gather up in barns and yet your heavenly Father feeds them … therefore, do not worry.” I trusted God so heartily I gave up everything and wandered the United States as a traveling ascetic. I ate garbage and slept under the stars and listened to the burdens of thousands of people who picked me up as a hitchhiker, praying for them and simply being a shoulder to cry on. I did this for over five years. Here, I learned the immense pain that many, many are carrying around – and that through God, we can gather ourselves together in the face of that pain and know love and a covenental community – even in the most unlikely places.
Later, as years pass, the power of knowing and trusting God so totally – to keep me safe as a homeless, penniless traveler – caused me to become dangerously self-assured. I lost touch, and the burdens I had carried with others broke my faith, and day by day, I slipped further. I began drinking heavily; I became a nihilist. I came to loathe the world that could cause so much suffering, and to loathe Man who had been so willing to go against his own blessings again and again.
I nevertheless continued to wander. Everywhere I went I was a stranger, even when I returned home. I craved to again feel as whole and light as I did when I was a pilgrim; I craved to meet a woman, to start a family, to perhaps redeem myself through the selflessness of loving a woman and pouring myself out for my children and family. I sobered up, I remembered God, but having been so totally humbled, I could no longer talk to Him, I could no longer pray.
I attempted church again; to no avail. Every Christian establishment I had ever visited, even before, had been inadequate, but before, I was running on the Word alone and it did not matter. Now, maturing as I was, I sought community with others – I knew I could not again carry a divine burden in solitude without being broken by it again. I learned that I am not a saint – that I am weak and need others. And so in going to church imperfections and inadequacies I had known and forgiven before became all too obvious and even painful. I was led, then, not to doubt God’s presence, and the necessity of living by and in Him, but to doubt the Christian expression of this knowledge and faith.
After much more suffering and confusion, I was led to meet the woman I now share my life with and hope to marry. She grew up as a Reform Jew, though mostly from a cultural obligation on the part of her mother. Her mother is an atheist. I found her beautiful in a thousand ways, and still do; one of them was in her own discontent with secular life, and yet also, her own distance from religious practice. Yet for all this, it was clear she believed and knew God to be there, in and of and around her at every step. I found myself, totally without knowledge of the Jewish faith, encouraging her to go to temple and to embrace her identity as a Jew.
This I did out of love only; I saw her craving her own roots, and clarity in her relationship with the Creator, and as she proceeded with it, every step excited me not only for her, but vicariously as well. I found myself wishing I was on the same path – because my own felt at that time to be a dead end. Unable to be a Christian; totally opposed to its hamfistedness and inadequacy, yet without any other obvious road to God, I found myself silently wishing I could be Jewish, even apprehending the possibility that my own soul could have originated from similar fabric, misplaced and hidden with broken roots.
This last consideration seared me all the more because I never knew my father, and my mother was estranged from me for some years. I never fit in anywhere, I am a bastard, I am always lost and inadequate and in some sense homeless. I desperately crave to come home to somewhere others are tackling the same feelings in community and tradition.
Yet I was and am aware of the peculiarities of converting to Judaism; I understand that converts are often viewed to be ‘weird’, different, even not accepted by many. And so I restricted myself from considering the possibility. That is, until I recently confided in her that I think of this sometimes, and admitted that I spend quite a lot of time studying Jewish theology, the history of Yiddishkeit, and various rabbinical scholarly essays. I’ve read Reb Soleveitchik and Heschel and Buber – and I find that where in my studies of Christian theology, depth was the exception to the rule, in Jewish theology, nearly every text I encounter speaks directly to the heart of matters, describing what I have always known about the ineffability of God and the bumbling character of Mankind’s spirit.
Now I am considering converting in earnest, but I am bashful in saying this aloud. I am worried I am fooling myself. I am worried I will endeavor down this road only to find myself at another dead end, that I may exhaust myself. But I wonder if I really have a choice, because I desperately crave to live in community with those who love God, I need to learn how to pray, how to live, how to conduct myself in this life, and feel I cannot waste any time. And anyway, with this woman I now share my world with, I know if we have a marriage and a family, that we will have a Jewish home regardless of whether I convert or not.
To complicate matters more, I live in a remote city, far from my beloved and far from Jewish life. I am in the military so I cannot simply leave and go to Brooklyn, where I have family and where there is of course such a rich Jewish community.
And so I am here, writing to you all, to ask what I might do. I am alone, and my grounds for interest in Judaism is shaky. I am not in a geographical position to convert, and yet I cannot step around the question anymore. I would like to know what to read, who to talk to, or if anyone has had a similar journey.
Thank you for reading, again, apologies if this is long or inappropriate here.
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Source: Reditt
