Shabbat Gathering: Conversion? Not so much.

Dear Chevrei, as is our custom, we will gather tonight at 5.45p ct to welcome Shabbat. These are the coordinates:

Zoom
Meeting ID: 883 8469 4181
Password: 822665
Phone: +1 312 626 6799

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Here we go.

Worshipping at Shaarei Shamayim means you will probably be praying next to someone who’s a convert. Maybe it's me. But I have a problem with that word “convert.”

To me, the word convert means that we’ve experienced a discontinuity in our lives. Once, someone worshiped as a Christian or was secular or was entirely something else. Now, that person has converted to Judaism. That discontinuity is not my experience. My experience has been one single, continuous path.

Sometimes, when we convert, we are told that we have always been a Jew where ever we’ve been on our path to discovering we are a Jew. After this discovery, we probably adopt some of the rituals and customs. In a way, the adoption of these rituals is discovering they have always been there for us.

I don’t want to be too woo-woo about this, but sometimes a convert is taught that, like other Jews, we too were at Sinai when Hashem gave us the gift of the law. On my own journey, I have a vivid memory of being at Sinai and realizing I had been a Jew back across all those centuries.

Otherness.

The other thing that bugs me about being labeled as a convert is how it creates an “otherness.” It becomes about “us” and “them.” I’m not saying that born Jews think of us as second class Jews (although I know some do). For me, it’s also about an internal struggle and I’ve struggled with this for a long time. As a convert, sometimes I’ve regarded myself as a second class Jew. At times, I’ve felt that I didn’t have a right to express an opinion about Torah. I didn’t have the right to serve on the ritual committee. And I didn’t have the right to deliver a drash during services Shabbat morning. Labeling me a convert is the first step to an inferiority complex about the most important part of my personality and my very soul. I don’t need any additional psychological problems in my life.

The baal teshuva.

So, for me, the model of conversion doesn’t work. Instead, my model is that of the baal teshuva.

Most of the time, when someone is called a baal teshuva, they are an Orthodox Jew who has lived a secular or non-Orthodox life for some amount of time and is now re-committing to live a halachically traditional life.

I’ve appropriated baal teshuva for myself and others if they want it. For a long time, I was a Jew who didn’t identify as a Jew. Now, I’m a baal teshuva. I am returning, turning, to the essence of my soul that has always and forever been there.

I don’t kosher my kitchen, but I do put a mezuzah on my front door. I don’t wear tzitzi under my shirt, but I do wear a kippah. I have returned to my true tradition and am observant in my own way.

I am eternally grateful to Hashem for showing me the path I was always meant to travel. I didn’t convert. I discovered who I really am.

And may it be for all of us a blessing.

See you tonight!
Gut Shabbes!

All my love,
brian.