It’s not easy to be a convert to Judaism. If the slow, existential transformation one undergoes isn’t enough pain and drama, then the Beit Din is. Or if the Beit Din is a pleasant bunch (I hear some are, actually), then the Jews themselves make up for it.
I haven’t had as rough a time as some. My father is Jewish, though my mother tells me I look like her own sister. (A blond New England Protestant.) But in the American Jewish world, where European Ashkenazim reign supreme, pale skin and light brown hair fit right in. On the other hand, if I were Persian, Moroccan, Ethiopian, Bnei Menashe, or Cochini, no doubt I’d be told, “Gee, you don’t look Jewish.” Seriously! An Ethiopian Israeli woman who lived in Crown Heights reports having been rejected by the Jewish community, but embraced by the goyish Black community. How do you like them apples? (Hey wait, King David was a redhead. Was he Jewish enough?)
No one can deny that converts are an undisputed boon to the gene pool. And Jewish law commands Jews to love the convert (which some Jews do particularly well by marrying some of us). But no matter how accepted we may be in our new community, there are certain reminders converts get during the course of our existence that we haven’t grown up with this stuff.
One is to do with food. For many Jews I know, it’s a mitzvah d’oraita to consume meat on Shabbat. I don’t understand this. I know meat was special, especially during the Middle Ages, but dairy can be special too. Do you know what a potchkee making a classy Indian meal can be? All that peeling, chopping, dicing, and measuring out spices—slapping a chicken on a pan and putting it in the oven is the work of a few minutes. (Gee, I should remember that when I’m pressed for time.) I came of age religiously in beautiful Newton, Massachusetts, where it was a little out of the ordinary to serve a dairy Mexican, Indian, or Italian meal on Shabbat. But Newton is pretty cosmopolitan, with plenty of culinary adventurers in the community. I pushed the envelope a little too far, though, when I made a gorgeous Indian spread for a friend and her frum, rabbinical New Jersey relatives on a Friday night. I checked with my friend to make sure everyone could eat Indian and she assured me they would eat whatever was put in front of them. Well, the wife was a little surprised, but ate the food politely. The husband, on the other hand, didn’t venture past the challah. I have never attempted anything that ambitious again for an all-Jewish guest list.
I also cook with sage. I understand some Jews in England grow up on sage ’n’ onion stuffing, but in America, Jews cook with dill, not sage. My mother-in-law, when she came for Thanksgiving one year, said, “You cook with sage? But that’s such a goyish herb.” Perhaps in some people’s minds, but I don’t think herbs affiliate officially with any religion. I would never presume to pick up a jar of nigella in the grocery store, peer through the glass, and ask, “Pardon me for asking, but are you Jewish?”
Aside from culinary Judaism, converts may have a fresh take on attire. I grew up wearing pants and shirts to school. (In fact, in 9th grade, I wore denim jeans every single day.) It’s a little odd to me, helping my daughters put together outfits that involve shirts, leggings or pants, and skirts or dresses over them. I think I owned five skirts my entire childhood, and maybe four dresses. Where there was no Shabbat, there were no Shabbat clothes. The dress my mother bought me (which matched my sister’s) to wear for my brother’s bar mitzvah (don’t ask) was the first dress I’d owned in years, and the last for many more. Now I find myself having to be cognizant all the time of making sure my girls look sufficiently feminine to get past the tzniut police at school, but still able to run or climb a jungle gym without their skivvies showing. It’s all too weird to me.
Kol isha is another one. In secular American culture, what Disney princess doesn’t sing? Or female lead in a show? Or kid with a solo in the Christmas concert? Davka, it’s the women who sing more than the men in secular American society. (Boys would redden and mouth the words rather than be caught doing something as girly as singing.) Even someone who spends time in a non-Orthodox shul has to be confused by this, since a good number of their cantors nowadays are women. The more liberal frummies pair up women singers or combine them with men. I still can’t stop asking, “Who cares?”
In my experience, married converts are expected to cover their hair. I’ve written plenty on this subject already (here and here). In short, in my former community, the only women who covered their hair during the week were a handful of women from out of town, and converts. As I have written, I gave it the old college try, but in the end that particular madrega was not a comfortable perch for me.
The dunk in the mikvah (“Today I am a doughnut” was the subject line on my announcement to friends) was not the end of the process of becoming Jewish. Just as I find myself clinging to much of the Weltanschauung I was raised with, I also find the absorption of my yiddishe neshama (Jewish soul) to be a gradual one. Where frum-from-births ingest the Jewish holidays with their mothers’ milk, I find myself slowly, year by year, working out my thoughts about each one. Pesach has always had a strong hold on me. Shavuot appeals to me as a convert, and Chanukah as a Zionist. But Purim, Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur, and the rest are still works in progress. Year after year, I read about them, ask friends about how they relate to them, and slowly find a way to fit them into my spiritual cosmos. And I’m not the only convert I know to shake my head during the lulav parade at Sukkot and say, “I can’t believe I’m doing this!”
I’m sure it was a relief to my parents when I remained someone they could recognize after all this “Orthodox mishegosn” (as my father called it). Contrary to their fears, I did not drift away, cease contact with them, or stop eating in their house. I think I’m very much what I once was, with some major and some minor changes. Judaism has added the richness of community, wisdom, life cycle events, and important character development to my life. And it has taken away some of the loneliness and isolation I have felt in the past, and directed my search for meaning in a way that has borne unexpected fruit. As difficult as it is sometimes (and sometimes I imagine what it would be like to live in a seaside Tel Aviv apartment and eat cobb salad and pepperoni pizza), I wouldn’t really want to go back. And slow as it is to settle in, I have my whole life.
Shimshonit 
“For many Jews I know, it’s a mitzvah d’oraita to consume meat on Shabbat. I don’t understand this.”
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Many Orthodox Jews are simply incapable of thinking creatively about halakhah. The Gemara and Shulhan Arukh say there’s no joy without meat, and these folks take this statement as some sort of metaphysical statement about the ontological fabric of the cosmos. If you tell them that you personally like dairy more than meat, they’ll look confused for a moment, and reiterate what the Gemara says. It’s like arguing with a rock.
“But that’s such a goyish herb.”
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They also confuse Jewish culture with Jewish religion. If Jews wore black hats, then it must be part of the religion. If Jews didn’t cook with spices, it cannot be because there weren’t spices in Medieval Poland – no, it must be that spices are un-Jewish! If they speak Hebrew with an Old German accent, it must be a “tradition” that they must maintain. G-d forbid that we insinuate that the Ashkenazi accent was influenced by their vernacular. And of course, Yiddish is a Jewish language, even though a contemporary non-Jewish German could converse perfectly capably with a fellow from Meah Shearim.
“Kol isha is another one.”
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Stay tuned for an article I’ll be having published in the May 2010 issue of the journal Conversations. In short, I show that the Aharonim flat-out forgot what the purpose of the prohibition was. If you read the Rishonim, you’ll see them treat kol isha like any other case of tzniut. In other words, you’ll see discussions of what subjectively gives you hirhur (musings) and hana’ah (sexual pleasure) – anything that fails to give you sexual thoughts is ipso facto permitted.
Similarly, they’ll distinguish between what is customarily exposed or concealed – thus, a woman’s face is “permitted” while her “thigh” is not, based solely on the fact that one is customarily uncovered and the other not. (The assumption is that anything you’re used to, doesn’t give you sexual pleasure. You become inured, habituated.)
According to the Gemara, Rambam, and Shulhan Arukh, all women must cover their hair, married or not. So why don’t unmarried women cover their hair today? The Ra’avyah, an Ashkenazi rishon, explains that since unmarried women customarily leave their hair uncovered, it is alright. Based on this, the Maharam Alashkar, a 15th-century refugee from Spain, explicitly says that all the laws of tzniut depend only on time and place, and nothing else. There are no set-in-stone laws of tzniut, according to the Rishonim.
So based on all this, many (not all) rishonim limited kol isha to singing, saying that speaking was not included in kol isha, because, they said, speaking fails to give sexual pleasure, and besides, speaking is customarily “exposed”, like her face, and only singing is “concealed” like her thigh. (Rambam and Rabbi Yehuda he-Hasid disagree, saying that to even speak with a woman is prohibited.)
But the Aharonim forgot all of this, and treated kol isha like a magical law that floated down from heaven with no rhyme or reason or logic. They take it for granted that kol isha is limited to singing, but their knowledge of the Hebrew language is such that it never occurs to them that the word “kol” implies an alternative, broader interpretation, begging the question of just why kol isha is limited to song.
I think you’ll notice a common theme to my previous three comments.
“I’m sure it was a relief to my parents when I remained someone they could recognize after all this “Orthodox mishegosn” (as my father called it).”
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Rav Kook, in Orot ha-Teshuva, says that teshuva is like electro-shock therapy, which we today would substitute for chemotherapy, the point being that it destroys the good with the bad. The yetzer ha-ra, says Rav Kook, is not really evil, but is rather the neutral primal vital force in man. (Thus, the Gemara says that without the yetzer ha-ra, we’d never engage in business or procreation.) We might ordinarily use it for hedonistic pleasure, but it all the same fuels our more positive deeds as well, if only we utilize it properly. When one does teshuva, he usually constricts his yetzer ha-ra, which results in a constriction of his positive energies as well. Ultimately, says Rav Kook, our goal should be not to diminish the yetzer ha-ra, but rather to redirect it from evil to good. My rabbi in yeshiva would, based on this, tell baalei teshuva to be sure to remain “themselves”, to retain their same basic personality traits and interests, even as they became religious. Too many baalei teshuva, he said, become pathetic nebukhs, and their parents quite rightly criticize their new religiosity.
It’s funny what you say about meat and Shabbat. This is something I’ve totally gotten on board with since abandoning vegetarianism. I’m usually a little disappointed if I go to someone’s place for a meal and they serve dairy (or parve), mostly because I rarely eat much meat during the week.
That being said, people usually aren’t very creative with their meat. I wonder how they would respond to a Shabbat meal involving fajitas?
It’s good to hear about the experiences of someone who has gone through Orthodox conversion and still has doubts and questions. I am a little concerned though that given the craziness surrounding conversions of late, it would be impossible to obtain a conversion without just unquestioningly accepting everything.
In a class I attended a few years ago the rabbi told us about meat and Shabbat but was quick to add that if you didn’t like meat then you should eat what you like. The onegof the day being even more important.
Your post is great and is already in my draft post for the weekly review I’ll put up tomorrow morning.
Michael: Thanks for the Torah perspectives.
Naamah: I did serve fajitas for Shabbat lunch a couple of times. They were a hit–both chicken breast and skirt steak. But who can go wrong with lime juice, cilantro, and scallion marinade, grilled to perfection and wrapped in a soft tortilla? I too worry about people who stop questioning when they get religion. Very unhealthy, and feeds into my theory about what drives all too many people who become religious: fear.
Ilana-Davita: Thank you for the compliment and for the link. Shabbat shalom.
[…] To be a convert, a post by Shimshonit […]
“Contrary to their fears, I did not drift away, cease contact with them, or stop eating in their house.”
How did you manage to keep eating in their house?
Michael: Contrary to the (unsolicited) advice we received from our rabbi, we knew keeping separate dishes, pots and pans at our parents’ houses would be yet another source of friction. So would taking all our own food (back when we had a kitchen in the US that made it possible for us to do so). So we make sure all of the ingredients that go into what we eat are kosher, and I never let my mother cook for us unsupervised. In fact, in the last 8 years or so, I have found myself put in charge of all of the cooking, with my mother acting as sous chef. It’s more work than I want on my vacation (especially when other relatives descend and I’m cooking every meal for 15) but it’s better than my mother–who insists she can’t keep the fundamentals of kashrut straight–making mistakes. As far as eating off their dishes, pots, and pans, we just shut our eyes and think of England.
Following up on the last comment — additionally, “Honoring your Mother and Father” is a de-oraita, while separate dishes is at most derabanan, and we figure, when in conflict the deoriata wins. Our parents’ houses are the only place we do this, somewhat to the consternation of our siblings and aunts and uncles and other extended family.
Sounds very reasonable to me.
goodness, i cannot believe that i JUST stumbled upon your blog. i, too, am jewish by patrilineal descent [thank the reform movement for that one]. i’ve had one mikveh/conversion already, with an independent beit din of orthopractic rabbis – but they aren’t r.c.a..
now i’m looking or thinking or tossing ’round the idea of a follow.up mikveh with an r.c.a rabbi [who was kind enough to tell me that i probably just needed a confirmation mikveh, and not a full.on year or two of study].
either way – glad to see that there are those of us who are reconnecting the links from our fathers.
Welcome, Shualah Elisheva. I wish you the best of luck (and brevity!) if you decide to go the RCA route. If an RCA beit din with Israeli rabbinate approval is an option, you might want to grab it. Just in case.
Shualah Elisheva: I knew I recognized that name from here. I’m the one who wrote the ridiculously long (and likely unwarranted) replies.
It’s a small world, and apparently, the blogosphere is even smaller.