Although I had been interested in it off and on for as long as I can remember, the first time I really felt the pull of Judaism, the first time I felt my soul crowd forward eagerly to touch the eternal, it was while watching the Showtime series Weeds when I was a wayward 22-year old.

I know, it’s not exactly what I expected either.

A character is in the hospital, venting his frustrations to a stranger who turns out to be the hospital chaplain on duty, a rabbi at the local congregation. The character, an unobservant Jew, expresses his disbelief in G-d, and the rabbi responds: “You want an easy answer, go Jesus, go Allah, go atheist. I’m a Jew. My obligation is to wrestle, to engage. It’s not to just blindly believe. That’s how I see it.” That quote, in the least expected of places, turned on a light in me that I thought had long gone dim.

When I was younger, I prayed every day. It was something I learned from my parents, who would have each of us kids clasp our tiny hands and bow our heads before bed and every meal. They belonged to a Presbyterian church out in rural Pennsylvania, built like a boat and full of Mennonites. My prayers in those days always followed a pattern and had the kind of urgency that comes with the belief that you are tapping in to something eternal. I would pray the Lord’s Prayer first, because the Bible said it was the correct way to pray and I wanted to make sure not to get anything wrong in front of G-d. After that, I’d begin a new, personal prayer, starting with the words “Dear G-d.” Like a letter, I would open with niceties—thank you for today and the blessings and so on—and then move on to brass tacks. Sometimes I’d ask for help in school or for my friends that I thought were struggling. I prayed for people in other countries that I believed were going to hell because they didn’t pray the right way. When I got a little older, I prayed that my parents would get back together, that a loved one would stop drinking.

The process of falling away from the religion of my birth was a slow and painful one. I remember bits and pieces of it, but I don’t have a clear sense of how the entire puzzle came together. I remember learning about other religions and wondering how my family could be so certain that we were the ones getting it right. I remember a conversation with my dad where I tried to express that everyone believed in the same G-d, but approached it differently. I remember how afraid I was of my own doubt—in the religion I grew up in, lack of faith was punishable by an eternity in Hell—and how empty I felt feigning belief out of that same fear. I remember trying to read more in order to find a way out of my questions, but only feeling less and less certain.

Finally, I walked out of church one Sunday—literally, during service—and that was it. I was an atheist. I rejected not only the religion I had been raised in, but all religion, all ideas of spirituality.

The problem was, as long as I could remember, I felt a pull toward the divine. I couldn’t then, and cannot now, put it into words exactly, but there was something in me that was thirsty for a connection. For a while, I fed that need with books and documentaries that reinforced my atheism, like those by Christopher Hitchens, or that explored religion from an almost third-party perspective, like those by Karen Armstrong.

Perhaps not coincidentally, although I do not necessarily connect it in this way, this was the same period of time in which my own alcoholism and addiction took root and flowered. I was young and unmoored, and resisting a pull I did not want to answer. I was also, of course, in the middle of a nationwide epidemic that would claim the lives of many of my peers.

Thankfully, I found my way into recovery. Part of that involved meeting a nun named Sister Laura, who used to smoke meth and who consequently lead a recovery-focused retreat I went on a few years after I first tried to get sober. I wasn’t raised Catholic—in fact, my family viewed Catholics with old-fashioned Protestant suspicion—but I still had (and have) a great reverence for nuns. I had been struggling with the concept of belief again, although I had identified as an atheist for a number of years by that point. I explained to Sister Laura my worries, chief among them that if I softened on my position that G-d wasn’t real, it would open the door to hell also being possible. If hell was real, I thought, surely I would go there.

 

She listened in a still way, like an animal does, and then told me it was okay to seek. That there isn’t a wrong way to “do” god. “Is that your word as a nun?” I asked her, looking for some sort of iron clad insurance, some get-out-of-hell-free card. “That’s coming from a nun,” she laughed.

At that retreat, I prayed again. I prayed that I would find a way to connect, that the part of me that was also a part of the universe would again catch fire.

I had never forgotten that quote from Weeds, and on a whim I decided to start reading about Judaism. I wish I could remember what, exactly, sparked it, but in all honesty it just felt like the next reasonable thing to do. It felt obvious. I picked up the book To Be a Jew by Hayim Donin, and could not put it down. It’s not exactly thrilling reading—it’s a bit more instruction-manual than anything else—but everything about it made such perfect sense.

From there, I read every book I could find—some of them more than once. I loved the Jewish approach to time: the cycle of the Jewish year adding structure and meaning to the turning of the seasons, the ceremonies that mark and commemorate events in a lifetime, the use of ritual to divide holy time out from the rest of the week. I loved the focus on deed and action as a way to work towards connection and understanding, but also as being ends in and of themselves. I loved the different brachot used to express gratitude for everything from the birth of a child to the sound of thunder to the successful use of the bathroom first thing in the morning.

After a while, I worked up the nerve to go to services for the first time as an adult. I had been to synagogue once or twice before with a Jewish friend when I was growing up, so I called her parents and asked them if it would be okay if I came to a Friday night service sometime. My friend’s mom was thrilled; in fact, she said, she was going to be leading the service that week.

Out of nerves, I asked a friend to go with me. That night, despite not knowing the tunes, despite fumbling through the transliterated Hebrew and keeping half an eye on everyone around me to make sure I was doing things correctly, I felt completely comfortable. It felt like coming home. I was so excited that I ran a red light on the drive home, too busy excitedly enumerating for my friend all the things I had loved during the service.

That was in the summer of 2016. It wouldn’t be for another two years that I would decide I needed to move forward in some way.

It hadn’t been that I was unsure. Ever since reading a midrash about how the souls of all Jews were present at Sinai at the giving of the Torah, converts included, I had been certain that I had a Jewish soul, even though I don’t usually think of things in terms like that. I had already learned to read Hebrew—slowly, haltingly—and had invested countless hours in studying. I followed the weekly parsha, I kept as many holidays as I could, I attended services. I knew that, in a sense, I had to be Jewish. There was no other way that made sense for me to be.

The problem was, formalizing the process would mean, at some point, that I would have to tell my family. I had hurt them so much through my addiction that the thought of adding more pain was almost unbearable. According to their belief system, lack of faith in Jesus as the savior of mankind—and the specific doctrines of faith that go along with that—was punishable by an eternity in Hell. I no longer believed or feared such an outcome, but for them the threat remains heart-stoppingly real. Here I was, several years into sobriety, facing the fact that I would have to tell them I was hurting them again, that I was rejecting forever something that they held as fundamentally true.

But it was now 2018. The world in general, and America in particular, was mired in a period of terrifyingly heightened anti-semitism, and my conversion felt like it took on a new urgency. So connected did I feel to this people and this religion, that it felt important to throw in my lot with them completely. It might seem counter-intuitive, and I suppose it is, but it seems to me that the best response to hatred is to embrace fiercely and passionately that which those who hate would take from you.

So, I enrolled in an intro to Judaism course offered online from the URJ (the only option in my area at the time), and contacted that same friend’s mother for suggestions on a rabbi. She put me in touch with hers, and he and I set up a time to meet.

 

I don’t remember what that conversation looked like, but I remember feeling so excited afterwards. Here again was that feeling of my soul crowding forward, eager to take in everything that it could. The prospect of actually being Jewish, of being part of something so beautiful, so ancient, so moving, was more than I could take in.

It has been a year since then, and I have only recently mustered the courage to tell my parents about my conversion.

They had been planning on visiting my house—not for anything serious, just a visit—and I knew I had to either tell them, or do a lot of redecorating. My home, at this point, is identifiably Jewish. I have a Tanakh in Hebrew on my desk, an Artscroll Chamash displayed on the top of my bookshelf, and dozens of books on Judaism throughout. I have a print of Chagall’s twelve tribes windows hanging, a calendar that combines Hebrew date-keeping with Gregorian, and a mezuzah. Not to mention, they were coming on a Friday.

So, I called them. Not ideal, I know, but I can’t change it now. I told them, and they were as crushed as I expected. The conversation was painful, and I took no pleasure in what I knew for them was significant grief.

Afterward, I was anxious and upset, but I was also immensely relieved. They knew, and the only way to go from there was forward. I was no longer keeping something from them that had been such a massive part of my life.

I chose the name Ruth for reasons that are both obvious and personal. Ruth was the most famous convert—a woman who left the land and religion of her birth to follow what felt right to her. To my reading, she was also a woman who prioritized female relationships and support, who blazed her own path rather than do what was expected. When Naomi felt abandoned by G-d, Ruth helped her find a way forward—in taking action when the path was unclear, Ruth showed faith and loyalty.

The reasons for my choosing Judaism are many, and hard to explain in one place. I found in this religion a beauty and meaning that I did not expect to find everywhere—that I thought I had stopped looking for. I feel a part of a millenia-long conversation, the constant struggle of a people to define and understand and connect with the unknowable. I have barely scratched the surface of the conversation, and I am so excited by the lifetime of learning that I am just beginning to explore.

It feels appropriate that I close with a quote from another silly TV show, one that happens to have been created by the same writer behind Weeds, Jenji Kohan. The quote comes from a scene in Orange is the New Black in which a character is arguing her own conversion, which started out as a ploy to get kosher meals in prison, but became so much more: “Honestly, I think I found my people. I was raised in a church where I was told to believe and pray. And if I was bad, I’d go to hell. And if I was good, I’d go to heaven. And if I’d ask Jesus, he’d forgive me and that was that. And here y’all are saying there ain’t no hell. Ain’t sure about heaven. And if you do something wrong, you got to figure it out yourself. And as far as G-d’s concerned, it’s your job to keep asking questions and to keep learning and to keep arguing. It’s like a verb. It’s like … you do G-d. And that’s a lot of work, but I think I’m in, as least as far as I can see it.”