I seemed to be suffering a strange and recurring case of mistaken identity — and it would end up changing my life forever

"Are you secular or religious?”

I looked up from the table at my favorite coffee shop to find a total stranger standing next to me.

“Excuse me?” I was baffled by his question.

“You should go to Aish.com!”

You should go away, I thought, and turned back to my coffee and my journal.

This was just one incident. I seemed to be suffering a strange and recurring case of mistaken identity — and it would end up changing my life forever.

But let me start at the beginning: I was born in sunny California to two lovely non-Jewish parents. When I was just a few years old, my parents decided to return to their Midwestern roots, which offered greater proximity to grandparents. Our family grew to include my younger brother as we bounced around between Cincinnati and Chicago for the next eight years, settling in Des Moines, Iowa, when I was ten.

There we stayed, amid the corn and soybean fields. No, we did not own a cow or a sheep or any livestock. We lived in a pleasant subdivision with nice neighbors, and I had a very typical suburban childhood.

I was a good girl and did what was expected of me, which mainly meant working hard and making good choices. We went to church every Sunday, and I also participated in our church’s youth group. I did well in school, had a nice group of friends, and was very active with extracurricular activities, most revolving around music.

After high school I went to a small liberal-arts college in Missouri where I continued to study music. When I got to college, though, I found that doing what was expected of me was more complicated than I’d anticipated. It seemed that college wasn’t just about good grades: We were supposed to be having fun (but not the kind of fun my parents would approve of), packing in lots of new experiences, and shedding whatever inhibitions we’d had in high school.

Being religious was considered very uncool. What 18-year-old wants to be uncool? Not me. So I proceeded to do what was expected, had a bunch of new experiences, and became very confused and somewhat miserable, though I would never have admitted that to myself.

My career plans were to study music on the graduate level, hopefully leading to work as a professional classical musician. To my teachers’ surprise, though, I failed to get into any of the schools I applied to. I found myself completely adrift. I was graduating with honors but moving back in with my parents.

While I was in college, my parents had moved from Des Moines to St. Louis. Not only was I not moving forward, going to a new school, I was moving to a completely unfamiliar city, where I didn’t have the benefit of familiar landmarks, neighbors, or friends.

As I tried to figure out what the next step in my life should be, I got an entry-level job at a local law firm where I acclimated to this new corporate culture. After a short while, I noticed a distinct pattern: On Monday, we’d come in, talk about what we’d done over the weekend, complain about it being Monday, and gossip about our coworkers and bosses. Eventually, we’d get around to doing some work.

As the weekend approached, we’d talk about what we were planning to do over the weekend. The weekend would arrive, we’d carry out our plans, and then Monday would come around, and we’d start the whole cycle over again.

After a few months of this, I began to feel uneasy. This was adulthood? Was this what I could expect for the next 40 years of my life? I just thought that it would be, I don’t know, more substantial. You could say I was having a quarter-life crisis.

This is when the strangest phenomenon started happening. People started asking me if I was Jewish.