Long Time Gone

If you're a Dixie Chicks fan, you'll know the title reference. All others may feel free to look it up at their leisure.

Do you ever feel that something just doesn't fit? Maybe you've started to wonder if you will ever fit anywhere. Well, as a blonde, Southern, country, formerly diehard Christian who wants to convert to Judaism, I can empathize. Sometimes Judaism seems so right for me...but that's only when I'm considering myself. Most of the time, it is feeling not-quite-right to very-wrong: not quite right in that I don't quite fit with the local synagogue crowd. Very wrong in that my husband and children are not only Gentiles, but Christians. Born-again, baptized Christians who love Jesus, love "Jesus Loves Me" to be sung to them, love to read about Jesus.

And then there's me. Confused, alone, torn in what feels like a million directions. Who is G-d? Who was/is Jesus of Nazareth, Yeshua? Who was/is/will be Moshiach? Where do I fit in all of this?

For Mother's Day we watched Gentleman's Agreement. The movie stars Gregory Peck as a writer who takes on an assignment to write about antisemitism in post-WWII America. At first he is hesitant because he feels unable to give a better treatment to the situation than had been done dozens of times over before. Then he has a light-bulb moment: he'll be Jewish for as long as it takes to get the material to write his piece. At one point he tells his Jewish boyhood friend not only is passing himself off as a Jew working, it's working a little too well. His mother's doctor reacts disapprovingly when he asks to be referred to a Jewish doctor at Mount Sinai or Beth Israel hospitals, his new fiance reacts poorly to the idea and argues over whether they should continue the charade in front of her sister and her friends, and most hurtful of all, his son is called "dirty Jew" and "kike" by the neighborhood kids and runs home crying.

Of course, the movie ends in a positive way, and I've always loved it for some reason. But seeing it now, after beginning the long journey toward Jewishness, it's as if I'm seeing it for the first time. It feels so much more hurtful when one might be the victim, versus the WASP who says, "Oh, how horrible...for you." The situation feels quite a bit different when the shoe is on the other foot, when you can't thank your lucky stars that you were born a Gentile, that your children will never go through that pain because they aren't a minority (or in the case of a convert, related to the minority). It certainly gave me pause.

I suppose I'm just feeling that even though I'm scared for what my choice may do to my family, to my children...I'm feeling that "the rest is a long time gone, and it ain't comin' back again..."