Anne Schlitt
I grew up a Lutheran in West Bloomfield, Michigan, a very Jewish town, with a birthday that always fell around the High Holidays and plenty of exposure to Judaism through friendships, bar mitzvahs, my dad’s business and professional connections, and most importantly, Ember’s Deli in Bloomfield Hills where my dad and I loved to order matzo ball soup. My family was active in our local Lutheran church mainly for the structured sense of community and the respect and friendship my dad had with the pastor, John Freed. I remember distinctly having a conversation with a Sunday School teacher--I must have been fairly young to still be in Sunday School instead of attending services--and learning that if you didn’t believe in Jesus, you were going to Hell. This just felt entirely wrong to me. And as I grew up, and read, and studied (I was a history major, and I’m always reading and learning), and understood more about the history of Christianity, I simply couldn’t get behind the story of Jesus as anything other than a really charismatic teacher. I’m a pretty rational person--the brutality of the crucifixion and the magical resurrection left me cold, especially as the foundational principles of religious faith.
I spent most of my 20s living and working overseas, gaining the kind of perspective that comes from exposure to multiple cultures, traditions, and ways of doing things. Back in the U.S. and living in Chicago, I can’t really point to a specific incident that sparked my initial interest in converting, but for whatever reason, Judaism kept showing up in my life. My hairdresser was Palestinian and we had long, philosophical discussions about religion while she cut my hair. A cute Jewish guy at a Halloween party wished I were Jewish because he really wanted to date Jewish girls. A Jewish coworker who had a crush on me told me I should consider converting. (Perhaps a little forward, but clearly I ultimately took his suggestion!) Then I moved to New York and plunged into a more intense atmosphere of Jewishness. A coworker had gone through the conversion process (he was married to a Jewish woman) and suggested I explore by taking a class. Learning and studying is my jam, so this was a great idea and I signed up for the 92nd Street Y’s conversion class. At the very least, I figured I’d better understand the Jewishness of New York, if not find something meaningful for myself.
The class taught me the foundational basics that I hadn’t possessed, and I met a group of people who were attracted to Judaism for different reasons. A high school student from Washington Heights was converting because she’d always felt Jewish. Tanya was marrying Michael and wanted to join his religion (they took the class together). I loved the readings, the discussions, the Shabbat dinners. But I didn’t yet have the courage of my own convictions. I had no Jewish partner. What’s worse, I didn’t even believe in God, not in any traditionally religious sense. How could I possibly “convert”? Doing it for the sense of community and the food didn’t seem quite right, in fact felt superficial and lazy.
The tradition goes that a rabbi turns the convert away three times before they will accept them as a student. I didn’t need the rabbi for this--I turned myself away.
After a few years in NYC, I moved to Maine, in 2004. The idea of converting hadn’t gone away, though now that I was with a non-Jewish partner, it seemed even more difficult to imagine achieving. I speculatively visited the rabbi at Bet Ha’am in South Portland, and she was welcoming, but I still felt blocked. I couldn’t do it. I turned myself away a second time.
Years go by. I am married (non-Jewish husband) and we have a daughter, Willow, born in 2009. Every year or so, I take out all the books I bought for the conversion class, and I borrow a few from the library, and I read about converting. I can’t shake it. But how can I possibly do this, all by myself, with no partner, and no traditional belief in God? And now I’m in my 40s. Isn’t it too late?
In 2018, events conspired to force my hand. First, through reading and studying, I came to understand that there’s room in modern Judaism for skepticism about God. If you’re “wrestling with God,” engaging with the idea, that’s enough--that’s everything, actually. The process was the goal, not the answer (and in Judaism, as we all know, why settle for just one answer when there are multiple opinions available?).
This realization removed the major conceptual stumbling block to converting. Now I just needed the courage to take the step. That came in two ways. First, I looked at my daughter, who was 9 in 2018. I wanted to be an example for her, to show her that you can make choices, no matter how old you are, and follow your interests, even if (especially if) they are not part of the majority culture around you. Second, at the time I was the leader of the Civil Rights Team at Willow’s elementary school. We were discussing religious traditions, and in describing Judaism, I felt a powerful emotional urge to be sharing the information from the inside, as a Jew, explaining my own practices and beliefs, rather than speaking academically and at a remove. After the Tree of Life murders, I felt even more strongly that this was the moment for me--I needed to make this choice now.
The third time worked--I didn’t turn myself away. Rabbi Vinikoor and the congregation of Beth Israel welcomed me so warmly, I never doubted for a moment that I’d made the right decision at last, and in fact, I think this is the time and place I was meant to take this journey--not in Chicago, not in New York, not in my 20s or 30s, but right now, as a 48 year old in a small town in Maine.
And even more rewardingly, Willow also decided to join me in this journey. I gave her plenty of space and (I hope!) didn’t pressure her at all, and she has flourished in Hebrew School and is learning alongside me. In all honesty, I couldn’t have done it without her. The first time going to services I was terrified, but Willow was at my side and together we sat and together we stumbled through it and together we made friends and together we are becoming Jewish.
As I’ve studied this year with Rabbi Vinikoor, I’ve perhaps unsurprisingly gravitated to the intellectual side of Judaism. As a history major and humanities professional, I appreciate and admire Judaism’s focus on deep textual analysis and respect for oral and written tradition. I feel at home with study and discussion and questioning--in fact, it’s the questioning that really differentiates Judaism from many other religious traditions and makes me love it so much. The willingness to expose the structure and the process of Jewish practice--how we got where we are, and all the false starts and paths-not-taken--this feels rational, and honest, and confident, and right. I’m taking part in daf yomi, and the Talmud brings Judaism to life in all its messiness and beauty. Every nail, every board of the Jewish structure is revealed, even the rejects. The rabbis present research, argue, question, make jokes, insult each other, make dubious assertions, talk openly about bodily functions and sex, share tales wise and otherwise, display their misogyny--it’s all there. The Talmud’s obsessiveness is both overwhelming and amazing--like life itself. And like daf yomi, my conversion has thrown me right into the middle of an ongoing conversation, one that started millenia ago and is still going strong. I’m learning as I go...it’s terrifying and exhilarating, humbling and elevating, irritating and sublime. And I get to be a part of the conversation now.
In Shabbat 68, the rabbis tussle with the question of what type of sin-offering is required of someone who "forgets" the "essence" of Shabbat and performs prohibited labors. How can a Jew "forget" Shabbat? (The Gemara wants to know.) Rav and Shmuel give two examples: a child who is kidnapped and grows up among gentiles without a Jewish education, and a convert among gentiles who never learned the halakhot of Shabbat. The Gemara does some fancy linguistic footwork to explain the inconsistency between forgetting and never knowing something to begin with:
We learned in our mishna: One who forgets the essence of Shabbat. Doesn’t this phrase indicate by inference that he was aware of Shabbat originally? In order to forget one must have previously been aware. This poses a difficulty to the opinion of Rav and Shmuel. The Gemara refutes this: No, what is the meaning of: One who forgets the essence of Shabbat? That the essence of Shabbat was always forgotten from him, i.e., he never knew it.
I love this odd phrase: "forgotten from him." It implies a deep layer of knowledge, that Shabbat is always there, under the surface, and access to it was removed for the child, almost like that circuit just wasn't connected in the child's brain to give them access to Shabbat. It sounds like a version of deja vu--you can almost touch it, it's just beyond reach, you know there's something there that you ought to know or remember, but it remains ineffable, beyond.
As a convert, this concept resonates. Judaism has been "forgotten from me." It's out there, it's somehow wired into me, I just didn't have access to it until now. It's coming into view. I am connecting to something that has always been there, I just wasn’t able to see it clearly until now.