Chanukah is fast approaching and I am an almost Jew in Small Town, Arkansas. The weather has turned cold and bitter, the sun is sleeping longer hours, and lights are blinking on everywhere. The final steps of my conversion are weeks away, and the timing could not be more appropriate. Chanukah is one of many solstice traditions about finding light in the darkness, warmth in the bitter cold, and hope. According to Rabbi David Young, alias RDY, Chanukah is also a time for storytelling. There are, after all, four versions of the Chanukah story and a lot changes between the first and the last.
Storytelling is one of many traditions, along with lighting candles and top-based gambling (dreidel/tetotum/toma todo), common to this time of year. As the dark and cold put limits on outdoor activities, people found other ways to entertain themselves, such as storytelling. In some cultures, people also accompany these stories with string games. Mentions of ghost stories, specifically, can even be found in old Christmas songs like "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year." Stories are also how we make sense of the world, how we answer unanswerable questions. So in the spirit of the holiday, I'm going to tell one more story.
I have always believed in God. Not just that, I've always, more or less, believed in a rather traditional view of God. Maybe it's just because I grew up in a society where belief in God was common, even though no one in my immidiate family did. Or maybe, as I sometimes tell people, it's the consequence of being a storyteller. It's easy to imagine someone else writing you, especially when some parts of my life story are set up in ways that could only happen in a book.
As a person who believed in God, but didn't adhere to a specific religion, I would say that I got the best and worst of both worlds. I always more easily befriended and trusted Christian friends than my family members, who, on multiple ocassions, expressed shock that a Christian person could be nice. Or moral. Or whatever. I didn't assume people were out to get me based on their faith. But I also didn't care all that much about their faith. I remember my father repeatedly asking me whether a co-worker was Pentacostal, and the answer was always the same. Don't know, don't care.
But though I could easily befriend people of faith, I always understood that my God was different than theirs. In cases with friends outside of the Christian majority this was obvious. I didn't follow their religion, so we clearly had different conceptions of God and the world around us. But inside that majority, many people assumed that I believed exactly the same way they did. On multiple ocassions, I had people tell me that "I knew whose daughter I was" or hug me and tell me they were going to pray for me, often without even asking what my problems actually were.
So I led this weird, in-between life, which, in the long run, was probably for the best. It gave me the opportunity to find my own way, even if the road was long and hard. I spent a lot of time dabbling, as many people in my situation do. I tried on different religions like trying on clothes. But nothing quite seemed to fit. I spent a long time wearing Christianity with one sleeve off. I attended a church, but I knew I didn't believe in God the same way others did there. My attendance suprised, but didn't bother my clase friends, but if I dared talk religion in a coffee shop, I'd get accused of Agnosticism by some high-and-mighty patron who looked down on anyone wrestling with the God question.
And then the pandemic hit. And I my large swaths of free time sewing quilts and listening to podcasts... podcasts which all turned out to be Jewish in some way. And the more I listened, the more it fit, like a piece of clothing I had sewn myself--the questions, the debate, the personalized definitions of faith and God. It was a place that I could believe in God comfortably, without anyone assuming what that did or not mean. It was a belief system that embraced the illogical world while simultaneously trying to make sense of it by re-telling the same stories each year.
But as we've learned from Chanukah, stories change with each re-telling. I wrote a version of this essay two years ago (though I didn't include it in this collection because it felt redundant) and I may write it again next year. And each year it's sure to be different. In one, I will mention my own podcast, in which my friends and I try to make sense of the world via YA fantasy novels. In another, I'll probably joke that Northern Exposure was my first exposure to Judaism (in the womb), and in a third, I'm sure to discuss my own writing and how this transition has influenced it. But for better or worse, this is the story you get this year. This is the answer, at least for the moment, of why I converted to Judaism.
End of Chapter 1
