First time I’ve ever told anyone outside my family…

I’m forty three years old. When I was thirty I was having a talk with my stepfather about how a lot of people’s last names in western society have something to do with their work. I got curious and looked up my last name. Druck. “Printer,” it said. And then, “Ashkenazi Jewish origin. That was the part that floored me. I was raised Mormon. Around seventeen or eighteen years old, I kinda started to gather that it was all untrue. They’re a very devout group, but any real looking into it and it’s very obvious it’s completely made up. Because it was my whole, sincere belief system though, and it was suddenly and jarringly found out to be a lie, it really pulled the rug out from underneath me. If that was made up, anything else could just as easily be made up. So I planted myself firmly agnostic for the next several years. I learned a lot about all kinds of religions, but like I said, who knows if they’re real. So this is the point that I was in that day talking with my stepfather. I called my dad and asked him, “Dad? Is grandpa’s side of the family Jewish?” “Well, yeah.” “Why is this the first I’m learning of it?” “Huh… I dunno.” We grew up knowing everything about the Spanish side of the family. I don’t know if it was because of the Mormon thing or what. The strange thing is, throughout my entire life Judaism kept popping up in odd ways. The majority of my heroes or historic figures or celebrities would turn out to be Jewish. My favorite novel was based around Jewish history in Israel…just a lot of small nods in that direction. Or even growing up, I feel like Christians are either subtly hostile towards the Jewish faith, or completely oblivious and uninterested in it. Even when I was growing up in church, I had an innate reverence about it, and it bothered me that no one seemed to know anything about Judaism in a religion that’s an offshoot. You’d think that if someone was a Christian they’d HAVE to believe and view things in the Torah the way they’re supposed to. Spoiler alert, they have no idea. Haha So I was always trying to learn the Torah perspective even then, because I figured it would have to be the correct view. Granted, as a kid, I didn’t learn much about it. Fast forward to last year, and I came across, at first a video by Rabbi Benjamin Blech. Keep in mind, at this point I don’t believe in anything at all. That video changed my life. I watched it probably ten times in a few days. Then I started watching more and more different rabbi’s videos. I started reading the Torah. I read some books on Chassidus, Judaism in general, watched many, many videos of the Rebbe. It was like I was learning and hearing things I already knew inside to be true. Even though I didn’t know most of those things really yet at all. I live in the middle of Missouri, so there’s not many schuls around, but I’m searching. I have never felt like I had any real purpose to my life, but the best way to describe the feeling is like if I had a compass that was spinning wildly and as soon as I started learning…IMMEDIATELY…the needle stopped hard and fast in one direction. I went from not really having prayed in decades to praying multiple times a day overnight. Baruch Hashem. My family is coming back home.