The List - Part 3

Daniel bought me a Kindle recently. I had never actually seen one up-close before I opened the package and I wasn't ever really sure that it was something I would get into, though we had talked about it on occasion. Truthfully, it was the last thing I would have expected from Daniel who knows me and my particular little obsession so well. You see... I have a problem. I am an addict. My name is Michael and I am a book-aholic. That is to say, it is nearly impossible for me to drive by a Half Price Books without swerving across two lanes of traffic, ramming the car into the closest parking space and running in through the front doors into my version of paradise. I'm a weirdo, I know. What am I supposed to do about it? I just love the feel of a book in my hands. So, the idea of test-driving an e-book just seemed... well, a bit blasphemous really. But, then I pulled the Kindle from its box and turned it on and heaven and earth faded into the distance and there we were... my Kindle and I... lovers at first sight.

Two weeks later and I already have 80 e-books in my Kindle library. The vast majority were free classics or under-a-buck obscure backwater titles that only a history or religion geek like myself would ever appreciate. But one regular-priced title managed to slip through while I was hastily searching the Amazon catalog: Bernice Weiss's, Converting to Judaism: Choosing to Be Chosen: Personal Stories. Of course, the subject matter is relevant; I am indeed mindfully diving into study of what it means to be Jewish, so it's no surprise that this particular little book popped up in my search results. But instead of clicking on the "read more" link I accidentally hit "But it now." Argh! "They make this too easy!," I griped aloud. "Wasted money," I thought as I began scanning over the chapter descriptions of my new purchase. This particular book, you see, is a recollection of the many interactions that Rabbi Weiss has had with couples over the years where one of the partners in a mixed household converts to satisfy their own or their partner's desire to create a wholly Jewish household. Great subject... very relevant for a lot of people... just not me. Or so I thought.

Daniel and I are still both nominally Christian. That is, we are both baptized. He was born into Catholicism, and I was raised as a Pentecostal, switched teams to Catholicism many years back and was then force-traded to the Episcopalians when I began questioning the Catholic coaching staff and their hardball tactics and old school ways. The reality, however, is that Daniel is non-practicing at best and actively anti-organized religion in practical terms. That's not to say that he's not a "spiritual" person (to use a non-committal, somewhat new-agey reference for it). In fact, he and I have quite spirited and deep conversations about spiritual topics on a regular basis. It's not the message that bothers him so much as the messengers. I can't say that I blame him. My own distaste for Christianity is rooted in the same disappointments and criticisms as is his.

For awhile now I have called myself a "Jesus person." I like Jesus, but not because he was a Christian (he wasn't), not because he said he was God or believed that he was God (he was a Jew after all, so that would have a been a big no-no), and not because he founded a better way to commune with God (he didn't even try to suggest such a thing). Of course, this pits one against 2 billion other humans calling themselves Christians who actively DO believe that Jesus was God, that he came to toss the Jews out on their heads and replace them with a bunch of glossy-eyed heaven-trekkers, and that he was the ONLY bridge to God. That's overly simplistic and probably impolite, but the reality is actually quite simple: Christianity - the religion founded by Paul and based upon gospel accounts of Jesus written many decades after his life - was in many ways a deliberate rejection of Jesus' Jewishness and the merger of his purity agenda into an amalgam of Mediterranean mystery cults. To question his divinity is to essentially remove oneself from the fold of orthodox and even much of progressive Christianity.

But this doesn't mean that there aren't some valuable teachings in the words attributed to Jesus even if a diligent seeker needs to filter the narrative plot of the gospels in order to weed out the Hellenistic influence on the early Church that sought to deny Christianity's original Jewish character. So, to cling to my Christian heritage, I have tried not to throw out the baby Jesus with the baptismal water and keep a link - even if a very small one - out of of a guilty reflex that screams at me whenever I think about an official exit from the Church, "You're betraying your own. You're a traitor to everyone who has had a hand in giving you life and you're turning your back on the gift of salvation." Yeah... it hasn't been all giggles and winks. Not by a long shot.

But after years of trying VERY hard to recover some kind - any kind - of real faith in the Jesus of the gospels, I have reached a tipping point. I just can't keep trying to please the nagging influence of my Christian upbringing at the cost of denying my own soul in the process. Judaism feels right to me. Maybe its just the methods and the encouragement of study and exploration that was verboten in my own tradition. Maybe I just can't live with the contradiction of being a "Jesus person" while denying the ocean of Jewish tradition in which he swam (against the current). In the end, after all, he was a minor character in a massive story that continues today.

Weiss's book is valuable to me because it explores these same feelings of doubt and angst commonly experienced by Christians who convert to Judaism. Though on the surface the book markets itself as a guide for mixed households, it dives deeply into the issues of identity and motivation that are brought to a boil in the furnace of the conversion process. It's no easy thing to face the reality of disappointing your loved ones with a rejection of their idea of God. Many of the examples in the book rest more heavily on the cultural significance of becoming a Jew - especially the "otherness" that underscores that identity. For me, even just thinking about the possibility of revealing such a choice to my family provokes a minor panic attack. They have surprised me many, many times in the past, ascending mountains of religious objection to accept me and reaffirm their love for me when I came out to them many years ago. In many ways, their efforts have been nothing short of miraculous. But this is something altogether different. It's one thing to disagree with a person and still believe that salvation covers them regardless. But, how are they supposed to reconcile a conscious rejection of their version of salvation? It is, in the tradition in which I was raised, the only unforgivable sin.