Goy2joy - Tumblr Posts
i like my blog cause it’s a little cheese board of assembled reblogs, and then there’s like, my own few posts. those are the rosemary sprigs.
about a year after i decided to convert to judaism, i found out my moms dads family was jewish.
my first reaction was irritation. it was mostly a mock anger; i joked that if great-grandma rose hadn’t converted to christianity i wouldn’t have had to go the long way back to judaism. but some of that irritation was real. ever since i started my conversion i’ve felt like i’ve come home. i can’t imagine my life without it at this point. how could she have ever left?
i wondered if her mom- esther, a ukrainian jew who fled to the united states in the 1910’s- was disappointed she’d converted.
all i know about my great grandmas rose and esther are from census records and bits and pieces my mom remembers from her childhood. i know they both spoke ukrainian- esther never learned how to speak english, and rose never taught her son david how to speak ukrainian. i know esther’s name was changed to “stella” at some point in the 1940s. rose made hamantaschen during christmas, and taught my mom how to make pierogi. i don’t know why esther left ukraine but i’ve got a pretty good guess.
i don’t know why grandma rose converted. maybe she really did believe jesus was the messiah. maybe orthodox christianity was, for her, a way to escape antisemitism while being as close as she could to judaism. i don’t know. but i definitely don’t blame her like i used to. i’m coming home, and i hope she would be proud of me.
AMAB converts, y’all are so brave. the idea of undergoing circumcision as an adult is so scary. one of my profs was talking about circumcision and he said, and i quote, “it’s a threat. misbehave and i’ll come back for the rest.”