Google Jews--Becoming a Jew

B”H

I’m very lucky. Whenever I’m at a new Shobbos table and there’s a lack of topic for conversation, I can always count on “…Oh well I’m a geir and my dad’s black.” “Oh is that so? Wow how did that happen? Usually more intrigued by the black father element than the being a geir, it nonetheless serves as a great icebreaker.

The story behind me and my family is a long one.

In a nutshell;

We had always strived to be better Christians

And we wound up becoming Jews.

It all actually started with an after-church bible study my parents enjoyed. The teacher was a very enthusiastic and insightful man and he really made the bible interesting. One day however, he simply stopped teaching at the church. My mother, particularly fond of the class, tracked down his phone number and asked if perhaps she and my father could learn with him. He happily agreed. That Sunday evening my parents went to his home where he welcomed them in with some good refreshments. He sat them down at his table for his private class. “First off,” he began, “there is no Trinity.” My parents’ eyes widened in surprise. He continued to explain…

Newly disillusioned my parents returned home. It had been proven to them that the ideologies of our church, such as the Trinity, the Apostle, and the Pentecost, were actually false. How then could we continue to worship in a place that did not share our values? So began the Church-hopping period of our lives.

We visited so many churches. But every single one carried one of those warped Christian ideas that we no longer followed. We kept going though, eventually we had to find a good Southern-Baptist church that encompassed all our love for Jesus and did away with the elements of Christianity that were pagan in origin. One night, on one of those late night commercials, my father saw an add for the Universal Church of G-d. Now my father would never remember a number from a commercial, but for some reason this one stuck in his head. And the message seemed a little like what we were looking for. We decided to check it out.

It was perfect. It was precisely what we had been searching for. There was no Trinity or similar fallacies and there was a strong sense of Jesus that appealed to us. We felt we had finally found our church. We told the minister we wanted to join. The minister of course was obliged to accept us (after all, it’s more money in membership fees) but he wanted to explain something to my parents first. “It won’t be a problem ion your case since you’re already married and because of that also no ones going to think anything. But you should be aware that once a year we have a sermon about the prohibition of interracial marriage. We are not racist. It just has to do with how the bible says not to have an ox and a donkey plow together, and I assure you, it will not affect your experience here.” My parents had heard enough. But it wasn’t a pointless trip though. When we were there we had heard quite a bit about this ‘Messianic Judaism.’ We were quite curious to find out more about it.

By now my grandparents and aunt had hopped on the bandwagon, my grandmother in particular. She Googled ‘Messianic Judaism’ and we began our research. Messianic belief dictates that indeed, the Jews are the chosen people, but they kind of messed up with that Jesus ordeal. Now us good Christians must take the wheel. You see it isn’t just Jews that have to keep the holidays, but they’re meant for everyone to celebrate. We learned about Succos, Pesach, Chanukah, and Shobbos. And so we decided that we wanted to be Messianic.

Mind you, everything still revolved around our hero Jesus, but now it had a Jewish twist to it. Anything the Jews do, Christians are supposed to do. Of course we messed it up so badly. We had become Jesus loving Google Jews. We found out about this and that through the internet and we did it. We found out you have to shake the Lulav. So that Succos night my father did it (with the Tallis on of course). Passover we had Matzo (it was still all about Jesus then too) and read about the last supper. We found out the real Sabbath is on Saturday. So Friday night my mother lit candles and then we went to wash the car. The more we found out on Google the more add-ons we put on our Messianic life style. We found out about tzittzis, so my mother made them and me, my father, and my brother—and my mother all started putting I them on (with the proper blue string of course). My mother and grandmother found out some general laws of stznius. This was sort of a big issue. This meant changing your very appearance! No pants. My parents were a little hesitant with that one. Wearing a skirt all the time? But when my father was on duty (He’s a cop, also adds to the Shobbos table conversation) he noticed a group of girls in jeans and just how revealing that particular type of apparel is. And so my mother decided it was only skirts for her.

We had also learned about covering the hair, at least when we were doing something ‘spiritual.’ So, every time my mother would light candles Friday night, she would put a cloth on her hair. One week however, my mother was very sick and confined to her bed. So my father took it upon himself to light for the family. He dutifully set up the candles, got the matches, and right when he was about to begin he stopped real quick because he forgot a key factor. He went over to a drawer, pulled out a cloth and put it on his head…

We had lived this happy life for a while (ignorance is bliss) but the urge to have a central place of worship overcame my parents yet again. My grandmother Googled around a bit and found a suitable place (we were a little less particular about our churches now that no church could match our practices). We decided that we would go there occasionally. We went and it was nice but they had been going on and on about this Tuvia Singer character. Apparently he was second only to the Devil himself. Tuvia Singer is a heretic. Tuvia Singer is blasphemous. And G-d forbid you should be listening or reading the Devils handy work. I say, I say it again, G-d Forbiiiiiid, I say he should saaaaave YOU from this disgrace OH can I get an AAAAMEN!? (sorry, you know how these southern ministers are) of course, being objective and curious woman she is, my mother figured she should at least hear what this heretic has said that’s so bad for the good Christian soul.

Wow. It’s pretty clear why this Tuvia is the church’s enemy. He spends his life as an active ant-missionary, constantly speaking out against them, and boy he can talk. He take the supposed Christian ‘proofs’ and ‘sources’ in the Navi and turns them on their head. The problem with Christians is they hardly open the bible to see the actual context of all those fancy quotes. They just take what they’re fed. But the most transforming, radical, and life-changing revelation we learned from his tape was;

SANTA, er excuse me but they are equally ridiculous

JESUS ISN’T REAL

(or at least he wasn’t all that great)

Gaaaasp. This was the part where my grandparents and Aunt got off our Jew-bound train. We on the other hand knew we had some (more) major changes to make. We needed a new place to pray. We found a reform temple and decided to pay a Friday night visit. It was beautiful. Everything was so nice, so perfect, so Jewish we fell in love. They had service and the rabbi went up to the head table which was adorned with a table cloth that said ‘Shabbat Shalom’ all over it. It was perfect. My parents went up to the ‘rabbi’ and stated they wanted to join this church or temple or whatever you call it. “Oh well that’s nice,” the rabbi replied, “but uh- You’re not Jewish.)

That last one hit us like a brick. We no longer believed in Jesus, but we never considered the possibility of being Jewish. It seemed that we fulfilled our obligations and that was just fine. This time however we actually started Googling Jews. We found out about yarmulke. Up to this time I had not been wearing any of these funny garments. I was too conscious of looking different and I already had a bully harassing me about my family’s radical changes. One day however, after being bullied around again, I came in teary-eyed and walked right up to my mother and told her I wanted to wear a kippah and tzitzis. (Later I knocked that bully real good) At first it was embarrassing, I felt that everyone was looking at me, but after a short time it became completely natural. This should serve as a lesson to all those apprehensive about putting on a kippah and tzitzis or dressing stznius. It becomes completely natural.

That remark the rabbi figure had made was hanging over our heads. We weren’t Jewish. My mother strongly felt we had to do something about this. My father was content with the way we were. Major arguing inevitably ensued. For days they went back and forth and it became more and more heated. It all climaxed when one day my father simply stormed out of the room and took his tallis and prayer book. “Where are you going?” my mother asked. “I need to pray now” my father angrily replied (we learned about the daily prayers by this time). “But,” my mother countered, “those things, the tallis, the prayers, they’re not yours. They’re not ours.” That got to my father.

I on the other hand had never even heard the word ‘Jew’. My mother showed me what they were, what they stood for, and I decided that it was the life for me to. We looked up local Jewish authorities and found Rabbi Deitsch’s Chabad of the East Valley (you can always count on Chabad). We called him and told him our interest in Judaism. We wanted the real thing, not reform or anything else. He referred us to Rabbi Block of the Beis Din in LA. We got in touch and the hard part began.

First they tried very hard to dissuade us. We wouldn’t change our minds. However, even then the Beis Din wouldn’t even consider us until; we had learned the laws of Shobbos and kashrus, my brother and I were enrolled in a Jewish school, we moved close to a shul, and we fully lived our lives as Jews. So we got the proper reading material and began studying. The first thing about Shobbos we learned, I kid you not, was that we could not tear toilet paper on Shobbos. Being Jewish would be interesting.

We learned all the things we were doing wrong as well as fascinating new things. Luckily, Rabbi Deitsch’s community, though tiny at the time, was extremely warm. We were working on moving into the area so in the meantime for Shobbos we stayed by the wonderfully hospitable Chanah Hendrickson, who became our best family friend, and her son Yitzy who became my best friend. We would walk so far to R. Deitsch’s house to daven but we did it. We moved into a cozy little home (only to move a mile down the road with the rest of the community when we got a storefront) and my brother and I enrolled in the Phoenix Hebrew Academy. We were living our lives as Jews and we were pushing for the next step.

The Beis Din gives you hell all the way to the end, I mean it, all the way to the very end. They have to. It’s a huge deal to become Jewish because you can never go back. Once you’re Jewish you carry the obligations to the end of your life. But we pushed and pushed hard. We showed them we were really in it and in a record nine months we were making our third final road trip to LA. When we arrived we chose our names, mine was to be Moshe Dovid (switched from Dovid Moshe because the acronym spells ‘dam’ –blood), Ben Yehoshua Calev. I mean it when I say they try to dissuade you to the end. Even at the mikva itself they still insisted that we had no obligation to become Jews. Of course it didn’t sway us at all. It was a quick, as I like to call it, prick-‘n’-dip and we were Jews.

When we came back the community had thrown a party for us in honor of our conversion. (later we hosted the entire community for the first Seder. and I also got to attend my parents' wedding!) it was beautiful. They had prepared a cake and we all got a piece that had our Hebrew name on it.

I got ‘Dovid’.

Dang. Should’ve chosen Chizkiyahu.