Wrestling With Belief
I was sitting in the office of my first rabbi during our first official conversion meeting. It was my first time seeing his office and I was highly amused at the significant amount of Batman paraphernalia all over the walls, dark wooden shelves, and cabinetry. There were comics amidst the Talmud and books of multiple ages in various states of repair and organization all over the room. Multiple windows let in a pleasant amount of sunlight. I was sitting on a dark leather sofa next to the dominating wooden desk that was piled high with papers and even more comics around his computer. "You know," he said, "this entire time you've been listing off reasons you want to become Jewish, but you haven't once mentioned God."
He had just started at the synagogue and our meeting was coinciding with him trying to get his bearings. Up until this point, I'd had a couple of responses with the emails I'd sent about trying to meet with him for conversion purposes, but finally decided to be brave and show up to the synagogue for Saturday morning Torah services to meet him in person. Email clearly wasn't getting me anywhere.
I walked into the synagogue Saturday with the woman who would eventually become my Jewish grandmother. She had warmly approached me in the parking lot and was delighted I wanted to learn more about Judaism. Of course, once we got inside the synagogue, she made a bee line for the rabbi in order to introduce us. I was immediately taken with a gentle yet firm presence. Tall with a trimmed dark beard and hair. He was wearing a blue kippah and a dignified black suit under his tallit. An outfit that I would come to learn would be his staple. After some discussion, he made sure I scheduled some time with him in the coming week to get the process of potential conversion started.
Back in his office, I was dumbstruck. In part, because I was completely unaware that I'd done that and in part because of the level of observation that must have taken place for him to pick up on it. Slightly embarrassed, and put on the spot, I stuttered through some kind of response. The specifics of what I said evade me. We slipped into a heavy silence while he waited for me to continue thinking in order to answer the question.
However, as I stopped and thought about it, I became ever more curious and somewhat concerned at the level of disconnection I felt when thinking about God. Why didn't I mention God? What would cause me to feel that such statements about God would not be important enough to bring up as one of the top reasons for converting? Then came the uncomfortable thought of, did I still believe in God?
The intensely complicated relationship I'd had with God came rushing forward and I realized how damaged it was. Filled with repression, I was at a loss with how to express this to him so I gave a vague statement of my past religious life with Christianity holding a lot of difficulty for me. I left soon after and couldn't get that question out of my head. It kept fluttering and buzzing and knocking itself around in my brain. Annoying yet persistent. It required I go down a path of thinking I wasn't ready to face yet concerning my journey into Christianity over the course of my life.
God had been drilled into me in a particular way. God was a father who rewarded good behavior and punished bad behavior. At the same time, hardship could befall people as "tests" of faith and have nothing to do with punishment. I remember the people going through "trials" with a cheerful outlook were somehow seen as more Godly than others. Additionally, God dwelled in "heaven" and separate from earth. But the darkest of all of the things taught to me about God was the concept of predestination. God being all-knowing and ultimately knows who is saved and who isn't before time itself, which brings highly uncomfortable questions into being about those who aren't predestined to be "saved." I'd grown angry and distrustful of God as all of these concepts made no sense when being told at the same time that God is all loving, all compassionate, etc.
While I am completely accepting of mystery surrounding God, this felt more like putting God into a highly limiting box to make people feel better about their religious and personal choices. This wasn't a God I wanted anything to do with. I had so many questions and when I brought them up with Christian religious leadership, I was shut down. That was probably the worst part of it for me. My faith was put into question rather than the question being faced as an opportunity for deeper understanding. Doubt meant you weren't saved and therefore were somehow inferior.
Then came my reading of Here All Along and the chapter on God. I kept returning to it because of the level of comfort, healing, and enlightenment it brought to me concerning the questions I had surrounding God. Not only was God described and discussed in ways I'd never been exposed to, but she had similar struggles that put words to what I had been feeling for years of my life.
"...I had been approaching the question of God backward. I had been starting with theology rather than experience. And even worse, I had been focusing on one particularly difficult theology – a theology that serves as a wall to the Divine for many modern Jews."
God as an experience had never been suggested or encouraged or even understood in my long and painful journeys with Christianity. If anything, there was an ongoing obsession in the communities I had been involved in to "prove" whether or not someone was "saved" by testing their theology on God and belief in God through their behaviors and attitudes, but the "experience" of God was viewed with outright suspicion and disbelief. Reading Sarah Hurwitz's writing of God as an experience and her own gentle and beautiful moments with the Divine started the process of me wanting to experience God again, but in a different light and way. Something more organic to me as a person. I just didn't have any idea of how to go about doing that.
After the Jewish New Year in 2023, I started taking an Introduction to Judaism course taught by my first rabbi. It was quite spontaneous and discussion heavy with random bouts of him serenading us with songs from Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat, his handwriting diagonally going across the whiteboard that was too short for him, and his voice sometimes cracking to a higher pitch when passionately talking about something. While at the same time, oddly nostalgic as it was located at this long table in the synagogue's library. Flashbacks of public school kept crossing my mind with the expectation of any moment the rabbi making the announcement of us having to do a research essay or pop quiz.
It eventually led to an "Ask A Rabbi" portion of class and feeling inspired by what I'd read in Here All Along about God, I asked, "How do you repair a relationship with God?" I was given a, "Hmmm...", a slow yet serious nod, and a deep considering look. I later learned (through his own admission) that this was a rabbi's way of sounding wise while not knowing what the hell to answer with.
Back in his office during that later meeting, he asked, "What does your prayer life look like?" This was a remarkably uncomfortable question for me because I didn't pray due to it always being associated with asking things of God, which felt off to me. But I was instead directed to simply state out loud where I was in the moment, what I was feeling, and things I was grateful for or struggling with without asking for anything. Simply a kind of "check in" where I state what's on my mind. However, the part that made the biggest difference for me was this discussion with my rabbi meant my questions weren't unwelcome or any indication of showcasing any kind of doubt. They were showcasing the multifaceted nature of belief and that such things should be met with care and respect.
At this point in my life, I was working at a bookbindery. I'd get to the work parking lot early and spend about five minutes in my car talking to the air wondering if I'd lost my mind. It's in these frustratingly poignant moments of the ordinary that the baby steps of great change begin to take shape. The best way I can describe it is things got clearer for me. I started to look forward to the time of "checking in" with myself. Of accepting myself just as I was in that moment. Feeling like I was connecting into something beyond me yet part of me. This would come to lay the foundation of healing necessary for me to move onto the next stage of my journey with leaving Texas and entering into a new phase of life. As Rabbi Kushner states in To Life!
"...Jewish prayer is not a matter of informing God as to what we believe and what we need, but of seeking His presence and being transformed by it. We don't ask God to change the world to make it easier for us. We ask Him only to assure us that He will be with us as we try to do something hard."
