The Journey begins: The beginning in a nutshell

I am a convert to Judaism.

I was once not Jewish. I have gentile relatives.

I am a convert.

I am  a Ger.

Whew...

Ok, that took a lot to be able to say. But that last one was the hardest. If you are a Ger, then you understand why too.

Why? because I have been hiding the fact nearly 30 years.

Within the world of orthodox Jewish society being a convert just isn’t fashionable. The fact that you are a convert becomes a kind of albatross around your neck that you’re never really allowed to forget about. It becomes a stigma that you are going to be forever branded with.

In the broader Jewish social hierarchy—there are more specific designations too—there are Jews of Yihus, Hozer Bitshuvah, and then the converts at the bottom. By the fact of your convert status you will be extremely limited in terms of not only how much respect you receive from your community but also insofar as who will associate with you and your options for marriage.

By the very fact that you were once a “goy” you will always carry some sort of gentile contamination with you, whether it is cultural, behavioral, or spiritual. Meaning that you will always have some element of the Gashmiut world of the goy imbedded within you—which you will always fight to separate yourself from.

One may choose to be open about ones conversion status or try to keep the fact a secret, no matter. You will not be allowed to take pride in the fact one way or the other, and even if you are open about it you will eventually try and hide it. On the other hand, you may go so crazy from all the hoops you have to jump through hiding it that you will eventually come out of the closet with it when you finally have given up on the entire endeavor of being accepted as a Jew.

My case is kind of special. I grew up thinking I was Jewish from the moment I could first be conscious of the thought. My mother wasn’t born Jewish. She converted earlier in life to reform Judaism, met my father who was Jewish and then converted to Orthodox Judaism after me and my siblings were born when she became more aware of Orthodox Judaism. We were all then ritually processed as well, and on the 27th of Shvat I became a Jew.

Among other issues religion became a problem between them and my parents divorced not long afterward. My father was never again to play a relevant role—for my mother or my siblings—as far as our communal lives in the community we lived in were concerned. He moved away to another state and that was that.

We became a kind of an anomaly that our orthodox friends just didn’t understand. (Being a convert was bad enough, but divorced?) So, Early on my mother decided that we would keep our status a secret after several run ins with rabbi’s wives who tried, in some sort of effort, to let my mom know that she would never be excepted in the community, that we kids probably would be, but that she would never be. I think that after those conversations my mother suffered a heartbreak that was worse than all the pain my father leaving could ever have inflicted. She had literally begun her journey into Judaism at age 12 and dedicated herself to it throughout all her adult life and here were all these people of some distinction telling her that as much as she had transformed her entire life and world for Judaism she would never really be considered a Jew.

It must have been with echoes of my grandfather’s voice in her mind at a young age telling her that those people would never accept her that she told me as young child of no older than 6 that I was never to ever tell anyone that she was a convert. At the time I though a convert was something like a democrat, I didn’t really understand. And for years I didn’t need to, until I myself began to feel my mother’s pain reverberate in my heart when I first began to experience feelings of otherness and shame for what I was, a convert to Judaism; a convert desperately trying to keep his secret otherness hidden in the proverbial closet, out of mind and out site.

This is really the beginning in a nutshell.