I never knew I wasnt Jewish

True, never knew.

Until I began to contemplate my status as a Ger I never had any identity other than that of a Jew.

My mother took me to the reformed temple where she worshiped from an early age.

I can recall our first passover Seder at the age of 3 or 4.  with my baby sibling at the table in high chair. I remember the Seder plate and my mother covering he hair with a small white scarf.

I remember the time my mother made me wear a Kippah in our gentile neighborhood and how uncomfortable I felt when we came across a large group of boys I knew and  one of the kids  asked: “Is your son Jewish?” I don’t remember their response but I do remember my mother thundering back with a very proud: “Yes”!

I remember my first Hanuka at about the age of 4 and all the gifts I received. Several I still have to this day.  I remember my mother placing the Menorah in the window and lighting the candles.

I remember going to the reformed temple for Succot at the age of 4. I remember the rabbi making Kiddish and the plastic fruits that hung from the canopy.

I remember all of these things at about the same age every Traditional Jewish child begins to build memories of them.

I remember always being Jewish.

I am only cognitive of a Jewish experience.

I have only ever known that I am  Jew.

The Albatros

We moved from a “non-Jewish” part of town to the “Jewish part” once my mother had committed fully to orthodox Judaism in her heart. We wouldn’t be formally converted for many months.

I can recall one day, that year, sitting on our couch playing with my toys and my mother suddenly standing before me–in retrospect she may have been drinking–and saying: “don’t ever tell anyone that I’m a convert, OK? I don’t want anyone to ever know that”.

I hardly understood what she was talking about.

As far as I understood a convert was something like a democrat or something. A fancy grown up word for something I didn’t understand, but knew that not all people would think was acceptable.  But I do remember the ugliness that word carried as it left her lips. It was coarse and vulgar. Something that sounded like it was worth hiding. Something that it would be bad to tell people.

This is the earliest recollection I have–at age 5–of  understanding that it was embarrassing to be who we were.  When we all entered the closet.

I didn’t know and was incapable of understanding that it also signified my role as the bearer of a great secret that I would be charged with defending at all costs in the front lines of our black hat community.

That was the day I received the burden. That albatross, which to this day rots around my neck.

Origin

Act one.

It’s a common story.

Woman meets man, they fall in love and have a baby. Happily ever after.

But thats not my story.

In my version: woman mets man and falls desperately in love, she calculates her pregnancy in what may be her last chance of having a child, man never commits to woman and denies the child is his. Man commits to a second much younger woman who he knocked up a few months before and who gives birth 3 months earlier.

The first woman in this chronology is my mother.

There is a second act in which my mother meets another man a few years later, in which a similar drama plays out and another child is born, my younger sibling.

There is a third act, that unlike the first two is still playing itself out:

Woman fulfills childhood dream of converting to Judaism…with her two young children, ages 5 and 2 respectively.

The play is set. The stage is an orthodox Jewish Community in the united states. The players are naive, poor, and without savvy.

The one thing they have learned very early on is that they must obscure the fact of their convert status, that they must hide the fact that they are Gerim.

The curtain opens and the lights shine upon them with an unforgiving brightness that is only matched by its heat.

It is this point at which I am truly born.

A Journey Begins

The Closeted Convert is an effort to convey my deepest feelings on a topic I have shared with no more than 1 person in my life.  This is a very personal and sensitive effort that cuts to the core of my identity and I endeavor upon it with much hesitation and trepidation.

The subtitle of this blog,  “A convert’s life long journey through Judaism” is no exaggeration. For whereas word “convert” normally conjures up an image of an adult choosing a new religion, I was in fact a child of  5 years old.

I cant quite picture how my story will be viewed as it unfolds. I know only that the within the community I live within it would be viewed as…controversial, and with uncomfortable reverberations that I am only now, in adulthood, prepared to deal with.

There are two reasons for this blog, the first is a sense of therapy for myself that I hope will come by organizing the ideas, thoughts and feelings it may elicit. the second and far more important is for you, my reader, especially if your experience resembles my own, to learn from and to let you know that you are not alone.

Sham