Shalosh Shanim Tovot (three good years)
This High Holy Day season marks the end of my third full Jewish year of living Jewishly (even though I only formally completed my conversion about a year ago) and the start of what promises to be a lovely and exciting fourth year! As it happens, this is about as long as I have managed to stay with one religion in my entire adult life – it seems that my pattern prior to this point has been to embrace a faith tradition with the “zeal of the newly converted” for a couple of years, wear out during the third year as I start to confront all of the places where the theology or practice or culture of that faith just don't fit me, then begin to dabble with alternatives or outright jump ship at the beginning of the fourth year – and so it is time to announce that I am about to become either Sufi Muslim or Zen Buddhist, or some sort of fusion of both. Just kidding. Seriously, that was just a joke. My rabbis can stop having a heart attack now. For the first time I can remember in