Jews kibbitz. It doesn’t matter where we are; when we get together, we pry into each other’s business. Case in point: My wife, our friend and I are waiting in line to see a movie at the Embarcadero in San Francisco. We quiz our friend on her budding romance with Ben, whom we haven’t met. Among the questions: What’s Ben’s relationship to Judaism?
That’s a hard one, she says. His father became a ba’al tshuvah (returnee to Judaism) when Ben was a teen. The father left his secular family, moved to Israel, married an observant woman and started a second family. These moves didn’t exactly lead to inter-familial harmony.
How many times have I heard variants on this story? The secular Jew who finds an intense belief in God, makes dramatic changes in lifestyle and causes disruptions in the lives of those around him or her. It’s almost a part of modern Jewish mythology.
Have I ever had a life-changing experience like this? A call to be born-again under the awesome shadow of religious passion? Or any other absolute experience that suddenly shakes the core of my being?
No, I haven’t. I’ve grown up in a cloud of suspicion, and my gut reaction to the ba’al tshuvah experience is skepticism.
I had a friend in high school, Sam. He was handsome in a slightly exotic Sephardic way, but always looked like he was half asleep. His most notable characteristic was that he somehow was a Casanova with the female foreign-exchange students.
Upon graduation Sam went on a group trip to Israel. He hooked up with a woman with whom he engaged in a lot of illicit partying. They were about to be thrown out of the group and flown back to the United States when something mysterious and momentous occurred. At some ancient site in Israel, the naughty couple was moved to prayer. They were never the same.
The next time I saw Sam, I was taken aback. His bushy brown beard, black hat and black suit sharply contrasted with his old flat top and garish surfer clothes. Apparently he had married the woman from the trip and was preparing for yeshiva.
It was a holy cow moment. My other friends and I tried to understand. The best we could do was think that our friend had craved a clear purpose in life and had succumbed to one of the most absolute paths one can take.
I was on a moral crusade of my own — that the value of Judaism is found in its questioning and adaptability, not its adherence to literal interpretations of the Torah.
What made the situation even harder to swallow was the fact that his family embraced the transformation and became more religious along with him. This didn’t compute.
A few years later I visited the rabbi whom my high school buddy and I grew up with and asked him about Sam. I told the rabbi my opinion of Sam’s choice, and the rabbi, the liberal head of a Reform congregation, rolled his eyes.
He had counseled Sam on his decision, and said that it was a painful, sincere and profound process. Sam was now a thoughtful and serious rabbi.
I left the meeting with my rabbi frustrated and perplexed. It’s taken years for his message to sink in: Just because something seems irrational doesn’t mean it can’t be thoughtful or positive.
Perhaps I hear about the cases of ba’al tshuvah that result in misunderstandings and broken families because they confirm my non-observant fears and assumptions.
And I don’t hear about positive spiritual conversion experiences because they fall outside the emotional understanding of skeptics like myself. But these experiences exist, and I don’t have to understand them to recognize their power.
There are different universes of belief within this thing called Judaism — those who might find this kind of call to God beautiful and those who find it disturbing. For the faith to thrive, these universes need to connect and come to terms with one another.