An answer for "why?"

A conversation I had with some students this evening has been bugging me tonight, kind of in the way that you find yourself coming up with snappier comebacks or wittier comments than the ones you actually said, hours or even days after they no longer matter. But in this case, it wasn't an insult I wanted a comeback to or a conversation I wanted to sound a bit wittier in, but a terribly vital, deceptively simple question: why?

I had overheard a conversation about problems of a religious sort between a couple of students who had dropped in for anatomy tutoring this evening, but when I offhandedly asked what was up they told me it was "church problems," in a tone of voice that seemed to say "you're Jewish, you wouldn't understand." Wanting to feel a little more relevant, I admitted to having tried to be a Christian minister once, prior to   choosing Judaism. This decision seemed to puzzle them. They wanted to know why I would do such a thing. 

Why become Jewish? I offered a few reasons: I have a good number of Jewish friends, I envied the way their Jewish faith and culture enriched their lives, I figured there must be something of great value in it for them to persist in swimming against the strongly christocentric current of American culture, I admired how their Judaism and Jewishness seemed to be a central part of their life without giving rise to all of the in-your-face public displays of religiosity that I've seen from, well, certain deeply involved members of certain other faiths. I had found myself shopping for a religion and I liked what I saw in my Jewish friends, so why not? 

They were not convinced.

They wanted to know if I was at least the Messianic kind of Jew. Or was I the orthodox type who don't read the New Testament? I didn't tell them I'd had enough of messianism and that's why I left Christianity. I did tell them about Reform vs. Orthodox and how we Reform types try to follow the deep essence of Judaism in an ever-evolving set of practices rather than sticking to every yod and tittle of rabbinic law. They were happy to hear that somewhere you could find Jews who would share a bacon cheeseburger with you.

What can I say, it was a weird conversation. 

I told them about the sheer joy I find in my new religion. About the fact that we have at least twice as many holidays as they do, and not all packed into one corner of the year. One of them said "you don't change religions just to get better holidays."  I thought to myself "well maybe you don't!"

But they persisted: why did I decide to convert? 

Had I not just tried to answer that question? Were my answers, even though true, just that lame?

Then I realized that they weren't really asking why I had chosen Judaism, what had attracted me, what gems I had found in my new religion. They were asking why I had turned my back on their religion. Why I had left the fold of the safely Saved-by-Jesus. Why I had deliberately chosen to become a lost soul. Or worse yet, a traitor. 

I thought about telling them that I had gotten sick of Jesus. Not the guy, I'm sure he was nice and all when he wasn't losing his temper and calling you a hypocrite or something, but the whole worship of the guy. The its-all-about-this-one-dude we're-not-worthy isn't-he-perfect please-save-me stuff. In my new religion, it's all about being a people, we are worthy (at least a little bit, except on Yom Kippur), only God is perfect (though apparently Rabbi Hillel came close), and we don't need to be saved because we're each empowered to put our own spiritual houses in order. But I thought that was a mouthful and would go over like a lead hamentash anyway, so I didn't say it. 

I thought about telling them that I had seen the psychological damage a religion could do when it taught my preteen how unredeemably sinful he was so that he would feel a need to be saved. About the feeling of estrangement I had felt as a supporter of gay rights in a religion that was struggling with homophobia. About the sense of exclusion that can come from the seemingly universal Christian need for everyone in a room to be in agreement on some issue of belief or practice or morality or even politics before they could feel united as a community. They maybe could have benefitted from hearing those things, so they could decide not to make those sorts of mistakes in their practice of Christianity, but I couldn't put all the jumbled thoughts together at the time and I'm not sure the message would have carried anyway. 

So I told them it had had been a long journey that had all started with being  kicked out of my church. Then I told them that wasn't exactly true: I had just been told by some lay leaders of my church that I had no business becoming a minister...after I had already sunk three years of my life into seminary. Which hurt. A lot. 

And that personal detail closed down the conversation. But I don't feel like, even or especially with that last note, I ever answered their question well at all. 

Looking back now, I see that – in the interest of keeping the conversation light – I may have offered them only some of the fluffier reasons to be Jewish, the "come to the dark side, we have cookies" approach. But I never got to the core of why being Jewish matters enough to me that I would endure a two-year conversion process. I couldn't articulate the real reasons this "religious civilization" has gotten such a hold on me, why it really makes a positive difference in my life to be a Jew. I need to work on my "elevator speech," I guess. 

And while I do, let me toss this back at any of my Jewish (or Jew-ish) friends out there: what's your elevator pitch? Why does being Jewish work for you? Why does being Jewish matter? I don't know if inquiring minds want to know, but I sure do!