Thanksgivukkah!

Thanksgiving is going to be very special for me this year. It is already my favorite holiday, but this year it falls on the second night of Hanukkah. I am excited to be having a double holiday. I have never celebrated Hanukkah before so it will be quite a learning experience. I've already done some research about the original story, and the miracle that G-d performed by allowing the oil sufficient for one day of lighting in the temple to stretch for eight days. For everything else I'm going to be asking my Jewish friends. I want to learn about foods, songs, traditions, mitzvot, and prayers that are typical for this holiday. Since I will be going back home I can involve my family and introduce these things as a cultural experience. I'm guessing that they will be open to trying new things especially foods if I can actually figure out how to make something.

To celebrate I will need to bring a menorah and candles home, which will be hard to explain to my mom and brothers since my family has never celebrated Hanukkah before. However, I do believe that my family is open-minded enough to appreciate the holiday and its meaning, especially since this holiday celebrates something great that G-d has done for His people. My only fear is that questions about why I am celebrating Hanukkah will lead to questions about whether I'm trying to convert to Judaism. If this happens before I'm ready to share it there might be some awkwardness to follow.

At this point I still haven't talked to my family about my decision to convert. I was thinking that maybe I could use the time of my Thanksgiving break to let them know and talk about it with them. Wondering how my family will take my decision is one of the most difficult parts about converting. I know I will be met with significant resistance, guilt trips, dissuasion attempts, anger, frustration, and perhaps ridicule, but I know that they love me, and I know that I have to tell them at some point. If all goes well I will have their blessing to pursue conversion. If it does not go well I am prepared to go on in the process without their blessing.

Another difficult part about this Thanksgivukkah will be the food. I'm starting to learn about, and attempting to keep a kosher diet, and that means I won't be eating certain foods. This is especially difficult because my family is African American. In my head I'm going through the typical foods my mom makes for Thanksgiving, and I'm finding it difficult to think of anything that is Kosher by itself. I do admit that I don't know all of the Kosher rules, but from what I do know I can foresee this being quite a challenge.

Even with the challenges and potential for a negative experience with telling my family that I'm converting, I'm still looking forward to this break and the holidays that I will be celebrating with it as well. I will be sure to blog about my family's reaction to learning about my decision to convert when Thanksgiving break is over.

P.S. Here's a Hanukkah song I came across. I think it's pretty cool and educational. I love a capella singing and the tune and the creative lyrics are really good. Enjoy!

What I had been looking for all along

I was raised in a very Christian household. My father was a pastor of a Church of Nazarene in Summit, IL when I was born. Although he is no longer a pastor, he has been a musician at several different churches from time to time. My mother has always been very active in the church participating in many different church functions ranging from being the children's choir director, to missionary, to adult choir member, and many other things. As a child, and even into my late teenage years, I was also very active in the church. Until college I rarely missed a service a Sunday. I could count the times I missed on one hand. I was well-versed in scripture, and I was very serious about my Christian faith. 

When I came to college some things changed. I did not go to church as often for several reasons. One major reason was that I don't have a car and there aren't many protestant churches near my campus. The other major reason was that I became lazy when it came to religion. During the time I was away from organized religion I had some time to really look at religion from my own eyes and try to look at it objectively. This raised several questions and doubts about religion in my mind. These questions and doubts had me leaning toward the point where I wanted nothing to do with Jesus, G-d, or anything with religion. I had decided that if I was going to be a part of any religion or believe in any divine being I was going to leave it in the hands of that divine being or otherwise live as a secular humanist.

I went about this decision in a very counterintuitive fashion. Instead of staying away from religion I immersed myself into religion, and religious learning and discussion with the goal of seeing it as an outsider: objectively, logically, and critically.  One summer I tried reading the whole New Testament of the Bible. I joined two Christian bible study clubs at Bradley, and I still attended my home church services whenever I went home. All the while I was looking for something, anything that would cause me to no longer have any doubts or questions about Christianity. I found none. In fact, I was starting to see more and more reasons to stay away from Christianity. The more I learned about it the more of a bad taste it left in my mouth. Despite being raised as a Christian, my morality, my way of thinking, my personal philosophy, my beliefs about who G-d is, and my world view never really aligned with what Christianity teaches. So, I decided that I would no longer be a Christian. As a result of my decision, I lived a few months of my life without a religion.

Finally a friend of mine from Bradley Hillel asked if I wanted to help her with a new program she was starting called Challah for Hunger (C4H). I like doing fun activities such as these especially if it's for a good cause. At this point I looked up information on Judaism before and attended one or two Shabbat services some years ago, but I never really took it any further than that. Through C4H I was able to get be exposed to some Jewish customs, traditions, philosophies, and ideologies. This caused me to become more interested in Judaism. I wanted to know more, so I started researching things online and asking my Jewish friends about their religion. Then I began attending Shabbat services again. Something about the services gave me the feeling that this is what I had been looking for all along. I felt blessed by the prayers, the togetherness of everyone present, and the encouraging words of Rabbi Bogard. After I got that feeling I knew that I wanted to be a part of it. 

That is my story up until now. That is how I came from a Christian background and decided to convert to Judaism.

Talking with the Rabbi

Earlier this week I contacted Rabbi Daniel Bogard, the Rabbi for Bradley University Hillel, and one of the Rabbis from Anshai Emeth. I asked him if he could meet with me and have a talk, so eventually we agreed to meet earlier this afternoon. Rabbi Bogard had no idea what I wanted to talk about, but he was very accommodating and willing to talk and get coffee.

When he finally asked what I wanted to discuss I told him that I wanted to talk about Judaism and the process of converting to Judaism. He and I were both surprised immediately following this, but for different reasons. Rabbi Bogard was surprised because he thought I was already Jewish, and I was surprised that he thought that I was Jewish. I do admit that it is understandable that he assumed that I was Jewish though. I have been very active with Bradley Hillel, he has seen me there several times throughout this semester, and he has seen me at Shabbat Services saying several of the prayers almost every Friday night.

Upon realizing that I was not Jewish and that I wanted to talk about converting he then asked me about my background and why I wanted to become Jewish. So I told him my story, a story which I will discuss in a later post. We then discussed my reasons for wanting to convert, how he views conversions, what the process is like, and some things that come along with the process. He then opened it up to any questions that I might have. We got into some good conversation topics that gave me a good basis as to where I should go from here.

I have been thinking long and hard about converting to Judaism for quite some time. It isn't something that I take lightly. I know that there will be obstacles, challenges, and hard times directly attributed to my decision, but I am ready for whatever comes, and I know that G-d will be with me every step along the way. I'm glad that I'm finally starting on this exciting new path to learning more about, not only Judaism, but about myself, about my world, and especially about G-d.

With this blog, I would like to chronicle my process of converting. I am just now starting, but I want to keep you updated as to where I am, and what I am learning. I would also like to hear from others who are Jewish, those who have gone through converting to Judaism, and those who are currently converting to Judaism. Why did you decide to convert? What is it that you like most about Judaism? What are/were some of your major challenges? What advice do you have for me?