On being Jewish.

I dont' know when I actually started thinking about being Jewish.

When I was a small child I would look at the calander and say what are those holidays? I never really knew until I started to get older. Most people just said Chanukah was the Jewish Christmas and that really confused me.

I continued on in my confused state trying to understand why there was so much anti-Semitism in the world. I knew very few Jewish people as a child. Oddly enough my best friends all through elementary school and high school even were Jehovah's Witnesses. I am guessing because in ways we were all social outcasts from the mainly evangelical christian majorities in our schools.

I guess I should say that I was not raised any particular denomination. My mother is a Baptist by her own choosing and my Dad is a Catholic. I was a rebellious child who hated church and anything to do with God. Even Christmas has always been a secular holiday for me, more about the season than anything. I loathed the mornings my parents compromised and drug us off to the local Nazarene Church. Now mind you all of the people were very nice and I enjoyed sunday school there because I met a lot of nice kids I could not stand to sit through a sermon. Now as I have gotten older I have gone from agnostic, to athiest, to saying I had my own ideas. I now have decided where I really needed to be is Judaism.

I began reading books on the faith, books such as The Complete Idiots Guide to Jewish History and Culture and Choosing a Jewish Life. As I did this I couldn't help thinking where had this been all of my life. Well it had been all around I just had failed to see it or to realize this is where I needed to be. I remember when I first decided to tell my friends I wanted to become Jewish, it was like coming out of the closet all over again. I had no idea how they would react. I remember leaving the bar one night and telling Mimi that I had been thinking of going to beauty school for the shits and giggles of it and oh yeah I wanted to become a Jew. She just looked at me and said "well go on girl do hair and be a jew!" I just laughed. I never have made it to beauty school. I decided i wanted to finish my BA in Russian Studies first. I have however started my journey towards becoming a Jew. I have been observing the holidays and festivals. I have added things that make my home stand out as Jewish, although I still need a muzuzah to be mounted on my front door I just haven't been able to find one yet. I have books on Israel, a Menorah, a Chanukah snow globe all sorts of things. Of course these just add to it being a Jewish home, what makes it a Jewish home is the fact that though I have not had my conversion ceremony yet I feel every bit of me is a Jew. I feel like a member of this wonderful community of people already though my formal entrance won't be until the fall.

Even though I feel i am a Jew already I do believe heavily in re-incarnation. I say this just because I think there have been people through-out time that have been sent back because they were so good the first time that there is a need for that type of goodness again. I feel like I was an old yenta in another life. I have taken to hebrew as if I have always known it and I leave services feeling re-newed and whole. Most of all I feel spiritually happy and that is something until I decided being a Jew is who I was I hadn't felt in my life.

So I guess I will end this with the thoughts that being Jewish isn't just a faith or a religion it is about you as a person, about a people and community as a whole and also about how you live your life. On that I will end this post.

L'Chaim! (To Life!)

-Timothy
aka Sasha Harrison