Update (2023/7/14): The name and image of the correspondent has been removed upon their request.

I first met [Redacted] over Zoom last semester in a Jewish extracurricular class called the Jewish Learning Fellowship. In one of the first of our 10 classes together, he mentioned to the group that he was in the process of converting to Judaism.

I’d never met someone my age who was converting to any religion, so [Redacted]’s story interested me right off the bat. I ended up in a breakout room with him during one of the classes and asked him some questions. One of the most interesting parts of his story to me was that he’s converting to Orthodox Judaism, the most conservative of all the branches in Judaism, and he also mentioned that he’s part of the LGBTQIA* community.

[Redacted] hopes that his conversion to Judaism will be over before college ends so that he can go on the Birthright trip to Israel as a college student. And his gender transition, he said, will be an ongoing process throughout life.

“I know that it’s not the easiest thing that I could have done,” [Redacted] said through the plexiglass on our table in the Bear’s Den, yarmulke on his head, as it is always when he’s outside. He recognized that the reform or even conservative branches of Judaism “would have been much easier” to join as a trans and gay man.

“But I was like, I want to do what feels right for me and what I feel called to do,” he said. “So I just took the jump and I was like, you know what? Screw it.”

“If people don’t want to deal with me, that’s their problem, I am here for my relationship with God, my relationship with the culture. I can handle that all by myself.”

In an age when it feels like many young people are turning away from religion, sometimes for the very reason that many religious people espouse anti-LGBTQIA* rhetoric, I found it quite novel to talk with someone who sees religion not only as non-inhibitive to his identity, but in fact helpful for his transition process.

“It’s weird, because a lot of people have looked at those two processes and think that they can’t coincide with each other. But then I’m like, how can you not get how they go together? Because you’re very much changing your lifestyle [and] kind of like assuming this new identity and like leaving your past behind you to do what you feel called to be doing and who you feel called to be.”

The interconnectedness of these two journeys has been intertwined since the beginning of each. [Redacted] was 13 at the time, attending a friend’s Bat Mitzvah––one of the only Jewish people he knew in the small town where he grew up in Indiana. He doesn’t remember much about the service, as he wasn’t particularly interested in Judaism at the time.

“But just something about being there and in the community made me feel very connected to myself,” he said.

Puberty was hitting and that Bat Mitzvah was one of the only moments where [Redacted] felt obligated to dress in traditionally feminine clothes.

“I first realized that I was trans in that synagogue, like at that Bat Mitzvah, which is a weird place to have that realization.”

Part of that realization stemmed from feeling uncomfortable dressing up in a feminine way, and part of it came from a newfound connectedness he discovered with his soul.

“I felt this weird kind of oneness that I hadn’t felt before,” he said. “Usually I was like, ‘Okay, I am a girl and I’m Christian so I do this, this, this and this,’ but it was the first time that I was like, ‘Oh, I have my own soul with its own things that it needs spiritually and in terms of my identity.’”

It took years for the feelings that he first had in that synagogue to manifest into tangible changes in his life.

“It scared me,” [Redacted] said, speaking to his feelings in the Temple. “Having the concept of switching religions and the concept of switching gender were both very scary to a 13-year-old living in a Christian household, so I was kind of like, we will think about this later. And that happened for three years.”

For most of those three years, [Redacted] kept attending a Methodist Church with his family. He had been raised in the church and believed in certain parts of the faith. He connected with “the idea of God” and to the Old Testament. However, he had never been able to get behind “the Jesus part of the theology” and the idea that God exists as the Holy Trinity.

[Redacted] can’t exactly place his finger on why the idea of Jesus doesn’t align with his belief system, but his mind just never spiritually connected with that fundamental part of Christianity.

So, at the age of 16 with these thoughts percolating in his mind, [Redacted] stopped attending church services, instead opting to help out with the beverage station at his congregation.

But, over the next year, he began to miss the prayer and worship that had become staples in his life after growing up practicing Christianity.

“I knew that you could convert to Judaism, but it never clicked that it was something that I could do,” he said. “In my mind it was something that other people did and not me, because I was a good Christian and I would never.”

And then quarantine hit. Some people learned to make sourdough starter or play an instrument during lockdown; [Redacted] embarked on a spiritual deep dive into Judaism.

For about a month throughout quarantine, [Redacted] said that most of the books he read or video games he played featured at least one Jewish character. It wasn’t that the Jewish character was always pivotal to the plot, but it was the very prevalence of these characters, at a time when he was already struggling with his faith, that drew [Redacted]’s attention.

“If you don’t believe in signs, that sounds like some garbage, but for me I was like––this is a weird thing to happen over and over. So I started doing more research about Judaism, cause I was like, ‘Okay if something is being said to me I want to be open to it.’ And Judaism, for me, filled all the gaps that Christianity left for me.” [Redacted]’s belief system agreed with the singular representation of God in Judaism as opposed to the triune Godhead of Christianity.

“I thought I was like a weird Christian,” [Redacted] said, “but I was like, no I think my belief system that God gave to me is just a Jewish-like belief system.”

And it wasn’t just the theological aspects of Judaism that resonated with [Redacted] but the cultural ones as well. He appreciates how Orthodox Judaism emphasises honoring its ancestors and patriarchs throughout history.

“I love that it’s more of like a family and a culture and peoplehood than Christianity, which is like ‘You believe this one thing, everything else is just like a hot mess.’”

After spending a significant amount of his summer quarantine researching Judaism, he decided to jump into the conversion process at the beginning of college. He saw the fresh start that college could provide for him: a new space with new connections.

He connected with the Rabbis at Hillel and Chabad, two Jewish organizations on campus, in addition to finding a Rabbi nearby to guide his conversion process.

[Redacted] ended up connecting with Rabbi Garth Silberstein at the Bais Abraham Congregation. Bais Abe, as it’s more often called, was the only Orthodox synagogue that [Redacted] found within walking distance to campus, which was a necessary attribute as he can’t ride in vehicles on Shabbat, in accordance with Jewish law.

While the rabbis that [Redacted] has been working with are Orthodox, which is the most traditional of the main Jewish denominations, they have all been welcoming of not only his conversion, but also his ongoing gender transition.

He recalled one instance of the Chabad rabbi’s support. [Redacted] had fallen down the stairs at Chabad and thought he might have broken his elbow.

“People were referring to me as ‘she’ because they thought I was a woman, and the rabbi was correcting them,” he said. “Like this older, married, Orthodox rabbi was correcting the pronouns that these young EMTs were using for me. That was a very fun moment.”

[Redacted]’s elbow was thankfully not broken, and his fall did nothing to slow down the conversion process that has become such a pivotal part of his life.

After [Redacted] emailed Silberstein over the summer explaining that he wanted to convert, Silberstein enrolled [Redacted] in a Judaism 101 class through the synagogue. This class is part of the multi-year long period of Jewish learning for [Redacted] before he’ll go through the formal steps that need to be taken to convert.

While [Redacted] won’t technically be Jewish until he is vetted and approved by a beit din, a group of three Jewish men, and immersed in a mikvah, a Jewish ritual bath, he is already carrying out many of the daily practices of an Orthodox Jew.

He’s eating a Kosher diet, attending Shabbat services and implementing prayer into his life. [Redacted] has enjoyed this period of time where he’s been able to adapt his lifestyle to fit with Orthodox practices.

“You can’t take a week and all of a sudden be 100% Kosher and doing all the prayers.” He described this time as a grace period where he’s “not constantly racing against the clock” to suddenly enmesh all the commandments into his daily life.

And while [Redacted] will soon be considered fully Jewish, religiously and ethnically, he is conscious of not appropriating a culture with which he can’t yet identify directly.

“I always correct them when they call me Jewish because I want to emphasize that I’m not this minority cause it makes me uncomfortable,” he said.

He added that once he’s done with the conversion process, he will feel comfortable with people calling him Jewish. “But when I’m not yet, it feels like appropriation.”

[Redacted]’s friends have been supportive of his conversion process in addition to his transition. He noted that first telling people about his gender transition was a stressful undertaking, even though his friends were supportive.

“You really have to muster this like amazing courage for like 10 seconds to say it, and then just deal with the fallout of it.”

[Redacted] said talking about the gender transition first to his friends made it easier for him to discuss converting to Judaism because he recognized that life continues even after these announcements have been made.

“It won’t kill you and the world won’t explode, and things move on. Because it seems like the end of the world when you’re saying it, at first. And then it’s like a week later, and you’re just hanging out in your room watching Netflix and you’re like, ‘Oh, life is still happening. Life is still continuing, and it’s normal.’”

And more than life just staying normal, life got better for [Redacted] in certain ways. Now, thinking back to those books and video games in quarantine, he still isn’t sure whether they were a sign from God, but he does appreciate their presence nonetheless.

“I probably won’t get confirmation if it ever was [a sign] or not,” [Redacted] said. “But the fact that this funny little coincidence led to the best thing that’s happened in my life––I think there might have been like a little something more going on.”