I’m a new convert to Judaism. I’d long heard the call, but pushed it away. Finally in my 50s, I decided to take the plunge and make that appointment with a rabbi.
In my case, it took a little over a year to make it to the Beit Din. (That’s the court or tribunal of rabbis who test your commitment, your knowledge and your Hebrew.) The learning was a big commitment but that wasn’t the hard part. The difficulty is in the wrestling, the struggle and the self-examination. Less than halfway through my studies, and after someone else’s welcoming ceremony, I overheard members of my congregation saying “Who would be a Jew? You’d have to be crazy. Why would you choose to join the most hated people in history?” Why indeed? Honestly, I’d have preferred to have spent my year of study coming to the resolution that I very much enjoyed the study, but it’s not for me. It is, though. Converting after October 7 is definitely bittersweet, but I feel a great sense of relief and joy that I’ve connected with what I was meant to be.
Just before my Beit Din, I was asked to write one more essay – and one of the questions was what I would do to deepen my knowledge and practice after I became a Jew.
Some of my predictable answers were further Torah study, Tanakh study (aka the Old Testament in full, if you’re not Jewish) deepening my understanding and competence with the liturgy, perhaps through an adult Bat Mitzvah, but first joining the choir to develop my chanting chops. A less predictable answer, to me anyway, was exploring and developing my creativity as a Jewish artist. I didn’t know what that meant exactly, but I knew it was different and important. This website is intended to document that adventure.
Don’t expect every artwork to have an overt link to Judaism, though. Some will, most won’t. That’s not the point.