My Jewish Birthday (28 Adar)

Yesterday, March 30, 2014 was my Jewish birthday as calculated by chabad.org. I was born on the Adar 28, 5751 on the Hebrew calendar. Just for fun my friends and I got together to celebrate it the Saturday night before with cake and punch. In the picture below my friends wrote, "Happy Jew B-day" and drew a Star of David. The "1" was there because it was my first time celebrating my birthday according to the Jewish calendar.

Celebrating my Jewish birthday was a good time and made me feel special. The experience made turning 23 not as uneventful as it normally would be. Perhaps next year I'll learn more about how Jews celebrate birthdays differently from what I've done in the past.

After some of my friends sang happy birthday in Hebrew we did a Havdallah service (using the birthday candle) to mark the end of Shabbat. Shavua Tov!

Coming Out of The Jewish Closet

First off, I would like to apologize for not posting for quite a while. School, extracurricular activities and my social life have taken up quite a bit of my time lately. 

Anyway, I would like to update you all on me telling my family about my choice to convert to Judaism (some of my friends and I call it "coming out of the Jewish closet"). At first I was very nervous. As I mentioned in a previous post, I thought that the situation would include guilt trips, dissuasion attempts, anger, frustration, and ridicule. I am happy to report that I was completely wrong. The opposite occurred. 

One evening during my Thanksgiving break I sat down with my mom and I just told her that I was converting. She didn't really understand what I was telling her at first, then she had many questions. I anticipated many of the questions she had in order to prepare for the conversation. Luckily, I was able to answer every question she had. 

Back then and even until now she has some issues with my beliefs and practices, but for the most part she respects my decision. I believe that her respect for my decision comes largely because I have taken time to think it through and I was able to show her that this was something that I seriously wanted to do. 

My favorite time in my conversion since letting my mother and brothers know about my conversion process was on one weekend I came home to visit. I came home on Friday and when my mom got home from work I showed her how to light the Shabbat candles. We also had challah and had dinner and I talked to her about some Shabbat practices. The next day I showed her how I do Havdallah (the ceremony to end Shabbat). She and my brothers were very interested in learning about it.

This type of reaction to my change in religion was unexpected. What I can take from this situation is that I've grown and my mom now sees me as a man capable of making my own decisions. She now respects me as a person and no longer sees me as a child. I am exceedingly happy about that. Now the next step is to tell my dad and pretty much everyone else in my family.