The PBJ* said that she thinks we're fortunate to have been able to choose Judaism. She grew up in a nearby community (which is, incidentally, fairly heavily Jewish, at least now), and she and her brother were often the only two Jews in the public school they attended, and she absolutely hated the feeling of being singled out like that. She grew up before bat mitzvahs were common, and she has had trouble accepting the sense of being an outsider in the world-at-large and an outsider, as a woman in Judaism, of the community that should have been a safe retreat from said world.
She said she's envious of us, in a way, that we don't have that baggage; that we can come into Judaism without mixed feelings.
I wouldn't say I don't have mixed feelings, but they come from a completely different place from hers.
Yesterday, I was talking to another friend, whom I'll call Marnie, because I'll start running out of single letters one of these days. She and her Jewish husband are taking the Introduction to Judaism class at the synagogue where C and I are members. She finds herself in a similar situation to mine, in that she's approaching Judaism from a standpoint of having been raised as nothing, whereas most of the other converts we know were raised in some aspect of the Christian faith. Again, this creates a whole different mindset; we're not having to let go of other beliefs, nor do our immediate families think our eternal souls will be condemned if we reject the idea of Jesus Christ's divinity and messianism.
I'm looking forward to talking with Marnie more. She and her husband are neighbors of ours, so I think we'll be seeing them fairly often.
*Please forgive both the acronym and my use of it to refer to this person, but I cannot remember her name, and she's not likely to appear often enough in this blog to warrant an alias.
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