What fol­lows is a por­tion of the chap­ter ​“Judaism Redux” by Car­ol Conaway from Black, Jew­ish, and Beau­ti­ful: Con­tem­po­rary Blewish Voic­es, an anthol­o­gy edit­ed by Antho­ny Mordechai Tzvi Rus­sell, Sara Feld­man, and Brett Ash­ley Kaplan.

The day I turned twen­ty-one, I called a num­ber I’d been giv­en by a Jew­ish friend about class­es for con­ver­sion for those who were about to mar­ry non-Jews. I called the office and told the recep­tion­ist I wished to enroll and con­vert. My appli­ca­tion was accept­ed, although I left blank the spaces about when the wed­ding was and whom I was marrying.

When I arrived at my first class in Octo­ber 1970, I sat down at a class­room in Tem­ple Beth Zion, a Con­ser­v­a­tive syn­a­gogue in Cen­ter City Philadel­phia. I quick­ly deduced that I was the only stu­dent in the class of sev­en­teen who wasn’t there because of an impend­ing mar­riage. How­ev­er, by this time I was used to being ​“the only one” because that was the way I had been with the Barskys.

Our teacher appeared. He intro­duced him­self as Rab­bi Good­man, then turned to his sec­re­tary, who was seat­ed in the front of the class­room, and asked for the list of stu­dents. He then called roll. When I raised my hand to announce that I was present, he gave me a rather quizzi­cal look but con­tin­ued with the class as he had planned.

The clos­er it came to my ​“offi­cial” con­ver­sion, I began to lose my nerve. Rab­bi Good­man had stressed that when the non-Jew­ish class­mates con­vert­ed, our lives would change dras­ti­cal­ly. First, as Jews we would have to keep kosher for the rest of our lives. Sec­ond, we would have to part com­pa­ny with our birth fam­i­lies. I had long since defied my par­ents by being secret­ly Jew­ish, study­ing every book about all things Jew­ish that I could get my hands on, learn­ing more Hebrew, and form­ing a deep attach­ment to Israel — in part because my dear friend Chana Rosen­baum (née Anne Barsky) now lived in Bet El, one of the pio­neer­ing set­tle­ments on the West Bank; in part because I knew that if anoth­er Hitler arose to pow­er, the only place I would be safe was Israel; and in part because I loved God and was proud to become a mem­ber of ​“the Cho­sen Peo­ple.” I knew very lit­tle about my Black her­itage because I had nev­er been exposed to any Black his­to­ry. I knew far more about Jews than I knew about Black peo­ple or Chris­tian­i­ty. In fact, I knew more about Judaism than any­one in my class and any­one in my social cir­cle except Chana.

I missed a cou­ple of class­es on pur­pose. Then one after­noon I received a call from Rab­bi Goodman’s sec­re­tary, telling me that he want­ed me to fin­ish the class­es now that we were just a cou­ple of weeks before the end. I told her that I would come back to the rabbi’s class­es. I made that asser­tion quite con­fi­dent­ly because I inter­pret­ed her phone call as express­ing the rabbi’s hope that I would be suc­cess­ful in con­vert­ing. I had nev­er spo­ken with him about my fierce attach­ment to Judaism and life as a Jew, and he had nev­er asked me any ques­tions. I sup­pose he believed that I was sin­cere and felt con­cerned because he knew that I would be alone. He had no idea that I was a les­bian and suf­fered from severe depres­sion. He accept­ed me based on my respons­es in class and my obvi­ous sincerity.

Final­ly, it came time for me to appear, with Rab­bi Good­man, before a bet din com­pris­ing three rab­bis. The three rab­bis looked very stern as I took my seat before them. Once the ques­tion­ing began, I noticed that the ques­tions were becom­ing more and more dif­fi­cult to answer. One ques­tion I clear­ly remem­ber was posed by the rab­bi who sat in the mid­dle of the oth­er two. He asked me how I would know if my plane crashed and that I had para­chut­ed to a Jew­ish town. At that point, Rab­bi Good­man jumped up and com­plained that the rabbi’s ques­tion was unfair and that the bet din had asked these very dif­fi­cult ques­tions only in my case. The rab­bi who had asked the ques­tion said, ​“Either she can answer my ques­tion or not.”

At that point, Rab­bi Good­man returned to his seat, and I began respond­ing. I stat­ed that I would see mezuzahs on the right-hand door­posts of the hous­es; that if it were Shab­bat, I would see women bless­ing lit can­dles and men sip­ping wine from a beau­ti­ful cup and the fam­i­ly chant­i­ng after din­ner; that there would be a syn­a­gogue and that fam­i­lies would go to ser­vices on Shab­bat morn­ing; and that the men would be wear­ing tallises.

The ques­tion­ing rab­bi inter­rupt­ed me at that point and asked me, ​“Don’t you have enough prob­lems being Black? Why add to those by becom­ing a Jew?”

To that, I respond­ed that I already was a Jew and that I under­stood that this was a require­ment for my for­mal con­ver­sion. At which point, the ques­tion­er shook his head and dis­missed the court. Rab­bi Good­man told me that he was proud of me.

A week lat­er, the class­mates of mine who hadn’t dropped out of con­ver­sion class and I went to a syn­a­gogue in Elkins Park (anoth­er Philadel­phia sub­urb), Tem­ple Beth Shalom, which was a social cen­ter in addi­tion to being a tem­ple. It con­tained a large swim­ming pool. Rab­bi Good­man said the pool would be our mikveh. We women were told to change into our bathing suits and return to the mikveh.Then the men went to a cir­cum­ci­sion cer­e­mo­ny in anoth­er part of the syn­a­gogue. When they returned to the pool, we all par­tic­i­pat­ed in our first mitz­vah — that is, the rit­u­al of bathing in the mikveh and renounc­ing all oth­er reli­gions to become Jews. Final­ly, I had kept my promise to myself to let noth­ing stand in the way of my becom­ing a Jew. The plight of the Jew­ish peo­ple would be mine — even if that meant I had to die.

Once we left the mikveh and dressed in our street clothes, all of us moved to the main sanc­tu­ary of the tem­ple. To my utter relief, there sat four of the five Barskys: Nao­mi (whose name I had cho­sen as my Hebrew name because in my esti­ma­tion she was the ide­al Jew­ish woman — the woman I hoped to be), Jay, Deb­o­rah, and Dan. Then Rab­bi Good­man gave a very brief speech about the new Jews and began read­ing the list of my classmates.

The first name he called was mine. I rose and walked to the bimah. Once I reached him, Rab­bi Good­man gave me a paper writ­ten in Hebrew and Eng­lish and told me that it was my proof that I was a Jew and to use it for iden­ti­fi­ca­tion when asked for it. Then he shook my hand, and I returned to my seat, where I’d been with a hand­ful of friends my age. When I looked at ​“my fam­i­ly,” I saw that Nao­mi was beam­ing. Once again, my Jew­ish fam­i­ly, the Barskys, were there for me. They had nev­er ques­tioned me about who I was and why I had cho­sen Judaism. Instead, they took it upon them­selves to help shape my life as a Jew.