As you all may or may not know, I am currently undergoing somewhat of a religious identity crisis. I was not raised with much religion, aside from celebrating Chritsmas and Easter in the most secular of ways and recently I've begun to long for some religious identity.
This trip is the first time I have really been exposed to Judaism, and I've been doing a lot of thinking about it. For a while coversion seemed like a possibility, and I had resolved to do some learning in the next year with that as a possibility.
Today however, what little ground I seemed to have gained was somewhat lost when on the van we got on the topic of Christmas and how ingrained certain holidays are into our culture. Now, of course if I converted I would give up Christmas, no gift giving, no- well, any of it. And that would be difficult in a society that puts such importance on this holiday. Also I have virtually no Jewish friends, am not close to my jewish family and also have lots of christmas celebrating friends. I'm sure it would cause some difficulty to let the holiday season pass by and have to explain to people that I wont be participating. I'm sure they would respect it, but it would take som serious adjusting- I have to admit it wont be easy.
What really was the result of this imagined scenario is that I remembered that I do have some Christian identity and things like that would be somewhat hard to give up. My mother was very big into Christmas and it was an immensely important part of my childhood, and for that reason moreso than the "everyone does it" reason it would be hard to let go of it.
Also, being Jewish over here seems like a whole different story, where Jewish people are the majority, where they have their homeland and it's a state based on a religion. Jewish people are the majority here, at home more minority. Would I be able to find a community? Would it be hard? Will I feel the same way about everything at home, not surrounded by Jewish lectures and Jewish cultural activities like Shabbat? Where I go to Catholic school with no fellow Jewish students? Here everyone talks about Jewish stuff, it's everyday culture, it's everywhere.
I dont know but for the first time it occured to me that maybe my location is having somewhat of an influence on my feelings about this whole subject.
Another reason this is coming up, is yesterday I met a boy (well not a boy since he has a masters degree in engineering from Cornell,) named Jared who has a mother who is not Jewish. He had to convert and it was great to talk to him. BUT he had been raised Jewish, the conversion seems more of a formality for him since his mother isn't Jewish, so he went to jewish camps, etc etc and it's just not exactly the same situation as me.
Sometimes I wish my parents had tried to do SOMETHING so I'm not left in the middle feeling torn and unsure. Why doesn't something just speak to me in a way that I dont run into these doubts? Isnt that how you're supposed to find religion? I feel like I'll never be sure of one. And how can I convert without absolute conviction? Other people have found it, why am I not finding that surety?
Jared had some helpful advice and descriptions of the different sects and which is best for what you're looking for. He actually started reform, converted to conservative and is now converting to orthodox- so he can really explain the differences and why he himself was moved to change so many times. However, he mentioned he is limited in the places he can live because you need a certain community for that- to keep kosher every day all the time you need special food, and to make sure there's a local syagouge and of course if you ever want to get married, orthodox women... that made me realize being Jewish at home is different than here. Not that I think difficulty and challenge should be a reason to give up on religion since any religion demands sacrifices, but at the same time, it isn't going to be what I'm seeing here so I cant really make judgement until I go home and see how I feel.
So I'm now reevaluating, again. It seems that it just keeps getting complicated but even as I struggle I still want it. Part of me wishes I could be happy with my own morals and ethics and personal beliefs about religion, but for some reason even with that I feel like I'm missing something.
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