Judaism
Changing faith: what makes converts want to join the tribe
Some converts may be drawn by love of a Jew, but for some it is love of Judaism
July 24, 2017 10:49
Some converts may be drawn by love of a Jew, but for some it is love of Judaism
July 24, 2017 10:49If you wonder what prompts people to convert to Judaism, marriage would seem the most obvious motivation. Or perhaps the desire of someone of patrilineal Jewish lineage to become a fully recognised Jew. But what might inspire those who convert for no apparent reason?
For Aliza, originally from France, it was attending a Christmas mass in Canada with her mother and sister that convinced her she must find the right religion; she had already felt she was not a Christian since she didn’t believe in Jesus. On returning to New York, where she was then living, she started reading, first about Christianity and then “a little about everything. The more I learned about Judaism, the more I realised that it was what I believed — a true religion.”
Aliza contacted the rabbi of the Ohab Tzedek synagogue and after spending Shabbatot at the synagogue, knew she had to convert. Usually an Orthodox conversion would take about two years but because she had already started learning Hebrew and studied two hours every evening and all day on Sunday, it only took her ten months.
Two years later, she came to London and attended a synagogue where she was virtually ignored. She then moved to West Hampstead and discovered the Shomrei Hadath synagogue, where she was made very welcome.
Her desire, however, was to make aliyah, as every time she had left Israel after a visit, she had been in tears. This she finally did, a few years ago, and is now married with a family and living a Charedi lifestyle in Jerusalem.
Ilaria, a young half-French, half-Italian film-maker, had felt in her early youth that “it is important to know your roots”. She started asking about her origins at the age of 15 “as something up to then wasn’t properly clicking”. As an exchange student in the USA a year later, she experienced a feeling of religious freedom she had never felt in France.
Back home, she pursued research on the family tree and phoned the town hall “and got family names that were super Jewish”.
Most of Ilaria’s family were non-practising Catholics but some felt close to Judaism. One was her grandmother’s cousin, who hadn’t converted but nevertheless went to synagogue and did research into things Jewish. “I went to see her and she introduced me to the local rabbi and that was my first experience of Shabbat,” she recalls.
“I was blown away when the ark was opened and the Sefer Torah taken out. I was breathless. After that experience, I was sure. This is what I came up with when thinking about Christianity and Judaism: Christianity is like a dubbed movie and some emotions and expressions are missed, whereas Judaism is the original movie with the real actors’ voices and you can catch the full meaning and the emotions.”
Ilaria has started converting through the conversion centre in Nice and observes an Orthodox lifestyle and studies Hebrew. To her gratification, she has discovered that “there is Jewishness in the family memories”. She found from her research that she had Jewish ancestors who had come from Spain and had gone after the expulsion to what is now Italy, where they had lived, for some time, in hiding.
For Jane, English and long married, it was Nanny Schneider, an elderly Jewish lady living in the same block of flats, whom she visited as a small child, entranced by the smells from the kitchen, the crisp matzot and the mezuzah, who initially inspired her lifelong fascination with and love of Judaism.
She often accompanied Nanny Schneider to shul and felt a stirring which continued till her teenage years. Jane’s father, too, had a deep respect for anything Jewish and told her about the Shoah, after she had seen photos of emaciated bodies in an encyclopaedia. “Because they were Jewish, something moved in me and I felt this connection,” she says.
After leaving her Catholic school, she started thinking “outside the Christian box”, finding Jesus “a good Jew but not the Messiah”. Although “sticking within the Christian tradition”, she read copious books by Jewish authors and now realises she was searching. A few years ago she decided to study the Tanach and a course at the London School of Jewish Studies was “a revelation”. One evening,when they were looking at one of the biblical books of Kings, “from nowhere this idea came: you must convert now”. Seeing men with black kippot at the LSJS, she felt “this is me”. Jane herself always wears a kippah.
She approached various shuls but was told, as a married woman, it would be impossible to convert. Finally, she found the West London Synagogue, where she is now education co-ordinator, and started going to services. “I felt so moved when the Torah came out.”
She met West London’s Rabbi Helen Freeman, started a course in September 2014, attended services regularly and finally had her immersion a year later. “After dipping for the third time I felt amazing; I knew I was a Jew, a member of the tribe.” Jane took the Hebrew name, Liora, after a young girl murdered in Auschwitz. Her husband is with her when she lights the Sabbath candles. “It’s a special time for us both,” she says.
