I studied astrology, I learned how to interpret tarot readings. By the time I was in college majoring in theater, I was reading Hindu scriptures (and not for any play).

“There’s something in the spirit of the East,” I told my friend, “Something they have that we don’t.”

“Suit yourself,” my friend said. “And send me a postcard when you figure it out.”

I tried. I practiced yoga for hours. I learned to “sit,” a form of meditation, with the leading Tibetan Buddhist master in the US at the time.

“C’mon,” I said to another friend. “There’s this Indian guru, just a boy, doing something called the Divine Light Mission. Let’s try it.”

He didn’t want to join me, so I did it myself, but I quickly realized it was yet another meditation discipline. Within a week I was out.

Undeterred, I tried more. I took courses in mind control, where I learned to control my waking and sleep state through mind and breathing exercises. At one point, I dabbled in “The Way,” a sort of wacky Christian cult.

By the time I had finished college, I was thoroughly done with the East. I thought maybe what I was seeking could be found outside of myself, in the outdoors, in action rather than in the mind.

I started with the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California, in a survival school. I learned climbing, glissading, rappelling, and also how to freeze-dry food. I learned map and compass navigation and how to survive alone for three days without food or company, in the high mountains.

I hitchhiked across North America, from Fairbanks, Alaska, down to the Baja Peninsula in Mexico. I visited 49 states and most Canadian provinces. During these trips, I’d hang out with cult members and visit communes, including The Farm in Tennessee, which is still functioning.

I couldn’t say who frightened me more: the cult people, those tenacious believers who had nothing, or the utter American atheists who buried belief — and what did they have?

Still, more than I feared, I wondered. I was reading, learning, journeying, absorbing everything I could, trying to satisfy an inner longing, but the questions piled one atop another, and into my twenties I deeply related to that song, “Where Do I Go?”

2

A

fter college, the world was my oyster, or at least America was. Many of my hometown friends moved west to California, and I joined my best friend in San Francisco.

One misty midnight, I was waiting for the bus home from work when two men in suits sidled up to me.

“We’re members of a theater group,” they said. “We’re selling tickets to a play called The Magician.”

“How much?” I asked. As a theater guy myself, I was intrigued.

“Fifteen dollars,” one of them answered.

I was something of a cheapskate, and I didn’t want to pay. But I was doing advertising boards on the side, and we ended up with a deal: One ticket for one bulletin board.

The day of the show, I turned up to the Theater of All Possibilities in San Franciso. The play was some drama, an allegory using the Kennedy family, full of pathos and passion, replete with spiritual and societal ideas that enthralled me, though I didn’t fully understand them.

All the characters in the plays had names that epitomized attributes of mankind — Topman King was the father, Destiny the mother, Vanity the wife, Peacock the vice president, etc. They were pitted against each other in the play, in high drama and a magical journey, to help defeat bad (the “Tyrant”) and let goodness prevail.

The curtain came down, and someone took the mic. “For anyone interested in talking about the ideas contained in the play, there will be a discussion group onstage.”

Along with some 15 audience members, I joined them onstage. We discussed the play with the people who were in it, but the real purpose of the session was to see if anyone wanted to join the theater’s esoteric School, of which all cast and crew were part.

“It’s a ‘Fourth Way School,’ studying the ideas of two philosophers, Georges Gurdjieff and P.D. Ouspensky,” a cast member explained. The School’s teachers were the actors who played the “Tyrant” and the “Magician” in the play: Alexander Francis Horn, who was also the playwright, and his wife, Sharon Gans.

The plays were a means of sowing seeds, spreading their esoteric ideas, feeling the corruption of society by playing these roles and making it come alive so others could see it, too. It was a huge project that kept current members engaged and enticed new people like me.

The School also offered comprehensive studies, encompassing religious, philosophical, psychological, and spiritual ideas from the Bible to Greek philosophy to the Grimms’ Brothers Fairy Tales.

The introductory tuition was $200 a month, would double at the end of the trial period. That was a lot, but I was a searcher. I was quite intrigued, and I decided to enroll.

The School had strict rules: No one was allowed to talk about the School or the Work (the study and application of the School’s ideas) to anyone, including family. And no drugs of any kind.

That was a hard one for me as I still tended to get high every so often.

“You won’t miss it,” Mike, my initiator, an older member of the School, told me, “You’ll have us. And anyway, George, it’s just an experiment.”

“Huh?”

“Yeah, that’s a prime philosophy of this School, doing things as an experiment. If you don’t try, you won’t know. We ask ourselves: Can it hurt? Might it help?”

“Hmm. Can it hurt? Might it help?” I repeated.

I was in.

3

IN

the first class, we learned more about the experiment philosophy. In Gurdjieff’s words, Man runs on automatic, reacting to things in the way he’s been programmed with very little real free will. We’re asleep and we need to wake up, among other means by deliberately trying new things, and putting ourselves under conditions that aren’t standard for us.

We might be told to use the “wrong” hand to do normal activities. A shy person might be told to sing out loud on a bus or in an elevator. A person who loved comfort might be told to take cold showers.

“Observe yourself,” was a core principle, and something I heard often in the first few classes. We were to observe our emotions, thoughts, and movements, to discover just how automatic they were and how little conscious control we really had over ourselves.

All students were involved in the School and the shows. My own theater background stood me in good stead, and I had several roles in The Magician. I practiced long hours and sold tickets in the streets, in addition to classes round the clock. After a couple of months, I was completely immersed.

There was a constant flux of new students. People came and went, but the new students who persisted become friends. The Work was deep, it took us out of our comfort zones, and we were often emotional in our interactions with each other. Through classes and working on the play, we got to know ourselves and each other deeply. Public feedback, criticism as much as acclaim, was the norm.

“I choose your parts in the play based on the chief weakness that you need to overcome,” Sharon said.

There was one new student whom I got to know well, a woman named Marcie. She was Jewish (as were a disproportionate number of students). We connected and soon we started dating. We were both deeply involved in the School and the Work, and in time, we announced our engagement.

At a retreat during our engagement, the directors of the School ran an exercise where partners and spouses would sing a single note toward one another to assess compatibility. When it was our turn, Marcie and I sang out our single notes.

Sharon delivered her stinging assessment: “You two are the worst I’ve ever heard in terms of compatibility.”

I didn’t say anything, but Marcie and I headed out of the room together.

(As far as I know, we are the only couple still married to each other from the hundreds of School couples.)

Shortly afterward, there was a chain of exposés involving cults in the US, which led the San Francisco Chronicle to do an article exposing Alex and Sharon as cult leaders.

The school disbanded and the theater was shut down. Alex and Sharon left San Francisco during the summer of ’79, along with many of the older students.

“What about us?” Marcie said to me. “What now?”

We were befuddled. We didn’t think we were in a cult. We were learning, studying, striving, weren’t we? And we were to be wed in a matter of weeks.

That August, we had a beautiful wedding in Queens, New York, complete with a chuppah at Marcie’s mom’s behest. My uncle, an Episcopal bishop, co-officiated along with a Reform rabbi. A wonderful time was had by all, except perhaps the Reform rabbi, who couldn’t get out fast enough after getting paid.

Right after our marriage, Marcie and I were invited to join the School again, in its new home in Boston, Massachusetts.

“It’s just an experiment,” Bob Klein, one of the teachers, said. “We’re all going up to Boston as an experiment.”

“Could it hurt? Might it help?” we said to one another.

We drove across the country and settled in Boston, delving again into learning and the Work. Shortly after arriving, we found out that we were going to be parents. We were young and euphoric — and still busy with the School, working on the plays. I got involved in writing the third play called I and recruiting others.

In 1980, our son was born, and Marcie’s mother came to be with us.

“He needs to have a bris,” said this utterly secular woman, who proceeded to look up a mohel in the Yellow Pages.

That mohel turned out to be the Orthodox mohel of Boston, something I found out only 16 years later when my son wanted to know if he’d had a kosher bris. I’d heard that there should be a minyan, so I called Bob Klein to be sandek and gathered some other guys from the School, only some of whom were Jewish.

The rabbi proceeded with the prayers, and when he got to the part about Torah, chuppah, and maasim tovim, which he said in English, he looked to me for a response.

I looked back at him, blankly.

“Your son is a Jew. His mother is a Jew. You’re promising herewith to bring him up Jewish.”

“Oh. Okay.”

I’d made a promise before G-d and man to raise my son as a Jew. I was not a Jew myself. I was still seduced by the School. Would that promise ever bear out?

4

IN

the summer of 1983, the School went international.

We started our play tour in Israel of all places, performing at an outdoor theater in Tel Aviv, and then at the Jerusalem Theater.

During our time off, Alex and Sharon encouraged us to travel to Egypt, to see the pyramids and the Sphinx and contemplate their meanings. But I was fascinated with Israel and wanted to spend the few days off right there, so I didn’t go along, though I was chastised for that.

I wandered the Old City, through the Arab shuks, and I went to the Kotel and tried to pray. I spent the night in an Old City youth hostel owned by an Arab who was smoking from his hookah while discussing ideas about life. He badmouthed Israelis, and at one point I asked him, “Would you rather the Arabs take back Israel instead?”

“Oh, no, I’d have to run away, lose my property — they’d steal it from me!”

His horrified reaction made me think for the first time about world perception of Israel, Jews, and Arabs.

Our tour proceeded through Europe, and when I finally got back to my wife and child, something had shifted. I’d been away for so long, and during that time Marcie had lengthened the rope between herself and the School. She was a mom to our baby, Jordan Eareckson, and that was her focus now. Being a mother was grounding her; she’d even made ties with the Conservative synagogue.

“Maybe it’s time to explore my own,” she said.

I was in a space where I could finally hear that, and when someone at School wanted me to invest even more time, putting my day job that was keeping us financially afloat in jeopardy, I had the clarity to say no.

“Then you’re out,” the guy working on the project told me. “If you leave, don’t come back.”

He took it to the top. Sharon called us and said we ought to stay.

“What are you going to do now?” she asked Marcie.

“I’m going to learn how to be a Jew.”

Sharon and Alex were both Jewish, but at Marcie’s statement, this teacher of five years who were never at a loss for words, had no response.

We were suddenly out and in shock; the School had been everything to us, but its allure had disintegrated, dust-like, between my fingers.

We moved from Boston — there was nothing keeping us there now — to New Jersey.

“Let’s do what they always said at School, find out why we ‘chose’ our own religions,” Marcie said.

It was something they’d espoused — You choose to be born who you are — the time you live in, your family, your religion. At School, we’d been encouraged to discover why we chose what we did.

We joined both the church and the Conservative synagogue in Milburn, New Jersey, which is where, one week, the rabbi spoke about Miriam’s Well.

I was weeding the garden one day, and a woman, one of those with a scarf covering her hair, walked up the driveway.

“Hello, I’m Elka Kessler,” she said, “Welcome to the neighborhood.”

I stuck out my hand, but she didn’t reciprocate. “We don’t shake hands with men.”

How peculiar, maybe because I’m not Jewish, I thought.

She came inside and met Marcie and Jordan Eareckson.

It turned out the Kesslers were part of a small Chabad kiruv community. They’d seen us put on our kippahs and drive off to synagogue every Saturday.

“We live right behind you, and my son, Shmuel, is about the same age as this little guy.” Elka motioned to Jordan Eareckson. “He should come over.”

Our boys hit it off, going back and forth between the houses. I soon took down the garden fence.

We’d go over to the Kesslers on Shabbos, and I learned that we couldn’t drink together. But Rabbi Kessler would speak about Chabad, about chassidus. Avid student that I was, I bought my own books on Tanya and the origins of chassidus and lapped it up.

The Kesslers introduced us to the Gordons, another pair of Chabad shluchim in the area. Rabbi Gordon had been a long-time rav in Newark in its heyday. Marcie started learning with Rebbetzin Gordon, and after some back and forth, I started learning Tanya with Rabbi Gordon..

“So long as you don’t bring up anything to do with Christianity,” he stipulated.

Fair enough.

I was still attending church at the time, and I wanted to discuss discrepancies I wondered about, explanations I’d heard. But I’d told the good rabbi I wouldn’t bring the church here.

My family was becoming increasingly Jewish. Our son was seven now and enrolled at Solomon Schechter, the Conservative day school in Bergen County.

When we’d first applied, it had seemed insignificant — it seemed like a better alternative than public school. But it was a pivotal step, and I found I couldn’t walk in two directions, two religions anymore; it was too much to handle (and frankly, too expensive).

And so I abandoned Christianity all together. I knew I’d given it a good go, but I’d always had questions that couldn’t really be answered satisfactorily, and church didn’t hold a candle to what was happening in Tanya classes. By the time Jordan Eareckson started going by the name Yaakov, I’d let go completely.

5

“S

hmuel says that real Jews wear their kippahs all the time — I want to do that, too,” Yaakov said one day.

At Solomon Schechter, the boys usually wore their tallis katans and yarmulkes at school, though not at home. But I’d had enough discrepancy in my life. If a kippah was right for school, it was right for home, too.

“Sure,” we said.

Yaakov was a steadfast little boy. He’d wear that yarmulke everywhere, even at non-kosher restaurants and takeouts.

“It feels strange to take a kid with a yarmulke to Arby’s,” Marcie said. So Arby’s fell to the wayside, while the yarmulke stayed.

Marcie was learning, I was learning, and we started to keep the holidays.

Succos time I built a succah. Avraham Kessler told me it was great, but then proceeded to invite us for as many meals as possible. (I later learned it wasn’t kosher.)

Come Pesach, we kashered the kitchen.

“Let’s keep this up, let’s start to keep kosher,” Marcie said.

It was an announcement more than a question.

“Doesn’t that mean we have to buy new dishes and everything?” I said.

She nodded resolutely.

I was hesitant — “Oh, Marcie… did we discuss this?” — but I nodded back.

We were sort of trying to keep up with the Kesslers. But at this point we had three children, and Marcie wasn’t working. We couldn’t afford to stay in our middle-class New Jersey neighborhood anymore.

It was a priority for both of us to find a community with a strong Jewish presence. Federation, we thought. Orthodoxy wasn’t even a consideration.

“It’s for people who are born into it,” Marcie said, her tone a tad wistful.

After a lot of research, we were off to Minnesota, which the strongest Federation presence after New Jersey. I went ahead to scout out the place, find a rental, and get Yaakov into the Jewish day school Torah Academy.

“George, just no shag carpet, okay?” Marcie said.

Of course, the house I found had shag carpet. But it was a great new first home.

Once we settled in Minneapolis, Minnesota, we made the rounds of the Conservative synagogues and decided on Bnai Emet with its nice rabbi, friendly vibe, and a good Shabbos kiddush.

Torah Academy operated along halachic lines, so naturally we started keeping more: holidays, prayer, Shabbos. What were we? Not Conservative; maybe Conservadox? Ironically, we were one of the most observant families of our synagogue.

We made some friend in neighboring St. Paul’s Chabad community. That fall, I was manufacturing timber, and sold many succahs to community members. I also did repairs and remodeling on the local Chabad House and the cheder.

And then Shalom Mordechai Rubashkin wanted some home improvements. Back then, he was just starting out in Postville, Iowa, but the family still lived in St. Paul. It was a big job, and I all but lived at the Rubashkins for about six months.

One Friday, I noticed their daughter preparing for Shabbos, putting up food on a hot plate.

“How old are you?” I asked her.

“Eleven.”

“Wow, my eldest is eleven as well, but he doesn’t do anything like what you’re doing for Shabbos.”

“What’s wrong with him?” she asked.

Later, I realized the question was really: What’s wrong with you?

We belonged to Conservative Judaism, but the movement just didn’t make sense.

We used our car on Shabbos only to drive to and from synagogue, but not anywhere else. The synagogue’s youth group went out for non-kosher pizza at a “strictly dairy” place. When Yaakov found a piece of pepperoni sausage on his piece of pizza, Marcie complained to the rabbi, who said, “It was a mistake. What could I do?”

The rabbi’s sermons on Shabbos were often odd, and baseball was frequently weaved into the discussion.

One time, one of the older members asked, “Rabbi, what does that have to do with this week’s parshah?”

We applauded and laughed, and the rabbi had the grace to blush. But he — and we — weren’t really doing anything about it.

This wasn’t like the Tanya classes that had put me on fire. This was some hybrid mix of feel-good Judaism.

We were especially bothered as I’d recently decided to convert under the auspices of our Conservative synagogue. We’d set a date for some time after the chagim, but weeks before that, I received a letter in the mail offering me the honor of holding the Torah during Kol Nidrei.

“You know I’m not Jewish,” I told the rabbi.

“But you’re working on converting, so it’s okay,” he assured me.

Marcie was dubious, we both were; this rabbi was bending the rules at will.

“You don’t really want to put your soul into his hands,” she said. He would be one of the rabbis on my conversion beis din.

“No,” I agreed, “but what else? I want to be Jewish.”

She didn’t press the point, but I thought about it again when I was in the anteroom of the mikveh, getting ready for the conversion. I could hear the three rabbis, discussing baseball scores, kibbitzing and shouting.

6

A

ll this time, Yaakov, who’d received a Jewish education from the start, was flourishing in Torah Academy, showing promise as a budding Torah scholar.

At age 11, Yaakov started attending a specialized limudei kodesh class for a select group of boys. The class took place while the rest of the school was davening Shacharis, so Yaakov had to daven at dawn before learning.

The shtibel in nearby St. Louis Park, Bais Yisrael, had a new rabbi, Rav Moshe Tuvia Lieff, and they held an early-morning minyan where my talmid chacham Yaakov davened, day in, day out. One day after davening, while waiting to be picked up to go to the learning group, Yaakov sat himself down at Rabbi Moshe Weinberg’s Gemara shiur. Very quickly, my son, a good year shy of his bar mitzvah, became part of the chaburah at the shtibel, consisting of Reb Shepsl Roberts, Moshe’s grandfather; Henry Weinberg, Moshe’s father, and many other founding members of the community.

The balabatim fell in love with Yaakov. I mean — his father was a goy, we were not fully shomer Shabbos and still went to a Conservative synagogue, but this kid showed up each day to daven and shteig.

Meanwhile, we were still struggling to find a synagogue we felt comfortable in. We’d left Bnai Emet and joined a minyan at another Conservative synagogue, where we used the ArtScroll siddur, but still weren’t satisfied.

When I took it up with the rabbi, he said, “You’re right, it’s not really any different here than any other Conservative place. I’d like to do more, but the board doesn’t.”

What to do?

Marcie had had it with Conservative Judaism, and I, too, found the lack of both G-d and Torah distressing.

Yaakov was flying, but what about us?

Could someone like me really join a shul like Bais Yisrael?

“Dad,” Yaakov said one Friday. “I don’t want to get in a car on Shabbos anymore.”

“So no synagogue on Shabbos?” I asked.

“No. Let’s start walking to Bais Yisrael.”

It was two and a half miles away, and Minnesota winters can hit lows of minus-30 degrees.

“Go ahead,” Marcie said to me.

She’d stay behind with our daughter, Callah, and our baby, Asher, and Yaakov and I would make the trek to Shabbos services at Bais Yisrael. When shul was over, Yaakov would often stay in the neighborhood and have the Shabbos meal at someone’s house. As his dad, I got invited, too, but I was uncomfortable going along and would head back home.

I felt out of my depth at Bais Yisrael. I felt their questions — What’s his status, goy or not? Does he even know anything about our world?

No one showed overt hostility; I was more embarrassed of my ignorance than they were hostile about it. But it felt miles away from how they’d received me at the Conservative synagogue, where I was admired for my enthusiasm and active participation in synagogue services and activities.

Here I knew next to nothing. I could sort of read Hebrew, had a vague familiarity with the ArtScroll siddur and the Hirsch Pentateuch, but that was pretty much it.

And of course, primarily, the blatant fact remained; I was not a halachic Jew.

I missed the singing of our Conservative synagogue. I missed davening and praying in English with the congregation. I was like Megama’s guy in the “What-Page-Are-We-on-in-the-Prayer-Book Blues”:

“I got the what-page-are-we-on-in-the-prayer-book blues

Am-I-supposed-to-sit-or-stand-in-the-synagogue blues…

I don’t know what I’m reading and I don’t know what to speak

G-d spoke to us in Hebrew but to me the thing is Greek…”

One of the things I did love about the Orthodox Jewish world was its music. Our kids listened to Uncle Moishy and Dr. Middos. I liked Megama, Moshe Yess, Schlock Rock, Journeys, and even Avraham Fried and MBD.

But while the ideas and the music inspired and uplifted me, I couldn’t say the same for Bais Yisrael. Yes, I had a celebrity pass as Yaakov’s father, but it was shredding in my hand, worn thin by what I felt was my ignorance of everything.

“I’m so proud of you for going,” Marcie kept saying.

“Of Yaakov maybe, but me?” I countered. “I just don’t think it’s for me, and that’s not even getting into the fact that we’re practically poor compared to most of them.”

“You’re a good handyman…” she said.

“But not much of a businessman,” I retorted. “My son’s going to Torah Academy for free while most of these men are supporting it…. You know who I feel like, Marcie?”

“Hmm?” She looked at me, and I could hear in her voice the hope that somehow this could still work.

“You know me, I’m a thinker,” I said. “And yet most days I feel like Yankel from Abie Rotenberg’s Journeys 2.

“He didn’t know his brachos, couldn’t say Shema by heart,” I trilled, my tone going loud and angry. “Here comes Yankel am ha’aretz, could there be a bigger fool.”

“George,” Marcie whispered. “You can learn.”

7

I

knew I’d have to learn a great deal to be able to undergo an Orthodox conversion. And while my family was thriving, I can’t say I was smitten. I had no “revelation” experience, I didn’t feel I had to be a Jew or that G-d was calling me to be Jewish.

My path toward Orthodoxy was essentially about going along, coping as best as I could, trying to fit in for the sake of my wife and children.

“If you’re going to do this, it has to be for yourself,” a friend said to me.

It resonated, and I searched deeply inside.

As a dedicated student of history, I knew that there isn’t, and never was, any nation, tribe, or religion that remotely resembled the Jews; we fit no historical paradigm whatsoever. It was clear there was something special and divine about the Jewish People.

I also knew, and felt deeply, that G-d exists and is in charge of This World. And the coming events would hammer that message home.

After walking to Bais Yisrael for some time, word had gotten round that we were hoping to become shomrei Shabbos and were looking to move into the eiruv.

Rebbetzin Bella Smith, a morah at Torah Academy who was also a real estate agent, called me up, “I’ve found you a house.”

As houses go, I thought it was okay, four bedrooms, a couple of bathrooms. But it was much more than okay, because Marcie liked it.

Then Rebbetzin Bella quoted a price, and I whistled. It was reasonable for a house, but there was one little caveat; I wasn’t really looking to buy, and I’d forgotten to mention that; I thought she was showing me a rental.

“I’ve no money put aside, have relatively bad credit, and am self-employed, not great qualifications for buying a house,” I said, holding out my hands.

“Wait,” Rebbetzin Bella said. It seemed the owners had a non-qualifying assumable mortgage; it was rare back then, even more so today. “In simple terms,” she explained, “that means that anyone can assume the mortgage for just a $100 assumption fee.”

“Sheesh,” we exclaimed.

But there was still the little problem of the down payment — the $40,000 difference between the mortgage and the cost of the house.

The offer was dangling in front of us, but there was no real way to make it happen.

One week later, my mom called me. “How are you doing, George? You know, Dad and I have been thinking, you’ve been in Minnesota a while, what about settling down? We’d like to help you buy a house.”

That call blew my mind. While my parents were fairly well off, they’d never offered help before. They saw me as odd, having explored many different lifestyles, moving around the country, taking the Jewish thing way too seriously… and now this? Clearly Hashem was looking out for me.

I had a deep sense that this journey I was on wasn’t only about obligations, restrictions, customs, but about a connection with a G-d Who was interested in my life.

A week before Pesach, we moved into our new home. My parents had provided the down payment, and we’d assumed the non-qualifying mortgage. Just like that we owned our own home in the eiruv.

It also so happened that Rabbi Heisler, who taught the morning class at Torah Academy, lived on our block. His daughter was in Callah’s class, and they soon became best friends. And with Yaakov’s bar mitzvah on the horizon Succos time, that summer Rabbi Heisler kindly offered, “I’ll teach you to lein.”

Another neighbor was Henry Weinberg, a patriarch of the community, who became a dear friend. I’d often wind up walking to shul with him on Shabbos and we’d talk; I’d voice my doubts and fears as he heard me out.

“It’s not that my concerns and embarrassment are suddenly falling away,” I told Marcie, “but we just have all these wonderful neighbors….”

I was too busy making new friends and also trying to be halachically shomer Shabbos, too busy enjoying myself with it all to worry if it was right or necessary or if I’d ever belong.

By then a few of my new friends, including Henry Weinberg, had pointed out that my Conservative conversion was no good and I should do a kosher conversion.

There was so much on the side of becoming a real Jew: Marcie, Yaakov, Callah, and Asher; our new home; new friends; and a community that had really accepted us once they got to know me in context, not just a lone goy walking in on Shabbos from who-knows-where, but a man with a Jewish family who lived on their street. By the summer I was ready.

“That’s it,” I announced, “I’m going to be a real Jew before my son’s bar mitzvah.”

Moshe with his oldest granddaughter, Chavi, in 2013

8

P

umped with my decision, I called up Rabbi Lieff’s house, only to be told by the rebbetzin, “He doesn’t do conversions.”

I knew that they had to dissuade me, but I was at a loss.

Several days later I called again.

“He doesn’t do conversions,” I was told again.

I knew I had to try again to really demonstrate my sincerity. I went directly to Rabbi Lieff. He sent me to another rabbi, who tried to ping-pong me back to Rabbi Lieff, as he was the rabbi whose shul I attended and he knew me. But I practically begged him to take me on.

“Well, you’ll need to start coming to my Gemara shiur,” he offered. “After a year or so, we can talk about conversion.”

“Oy vey,” I groaned. (I was using Yiddishisms by then.) “I want to be Jewish in time for my son’s bar mitzvah,” I said in a small voice. “That’s little more than two months away.”

He made a sympathetic sound but said there was nothing he could do. But I wasn’t yet done — I went back to Rabbi Lieff, who said he’d think about it.

Sometime at the beginning of August, Rabbi Lieff told me he’d arranged for Rabbi Shmuel Fuerst, a prominent dayan from Chicago, to come up to Minnesota to do two gets and a bris.

“Okay,” I said.

“George, it’s your bris I’m talking about. The rabbi’s coming up for you.”

I had no idea at the time what kind of honor that was.

I met with Rabbi Fuerst in Rabbi Lieff’s office. I remember him saying to me, “You know you won’t be able to eat at McDonald’s anymore.”

I laughed and told him I’d been eating only kosher for years.

He didn’t laugh in response; he was uber serious. I wasn’t sure what he made of me, but I suspected Rabbi Lieff had already pleaded my case.

This kosher conversion was so different from the Conservative one. There was no mention of baseball, for one. The dayanim on the beis din were Rabbi Moshe Weinberg, who gave the shiur Yaakov attended; Rabbi Smith, who taught all my children at Torah Academy at one point or another; and, of course, Rabbi Lieff.

Rabbi Fuerst was my mohel, and he did the hatafas dam, after which I was to immerse. This time the rabbis followed to see me dunk under the water.

Standing there, water up to my chest, Rabbi Fuerst asked me, “What are the three most important laws of Judaism?”

Questions, now?

My mind froze, but I managed to blurt out, “Shabbos, kashrus, and tahara ra ra… the laws of family purity.”

“How do you cook on Shabbos?”

“Uhhh… you don’t,” I replied. Phew.

Rabbi Fuerst’s response was: “How do you make cholent?”

I was in a tizzy by now, my mind racing, thinking that George Mosley Murray may never become Moshe ben Avraham.

“You put the pot on the hot plate, it can’t be right over the fire because you can’t cook it because…. Wait, I don’t know, my wife makes it.”

Apparently, that was the right answer.

They told me I could go under. I did, and emerged… a Jew.

I got dressed, blinking water. Tears?

“What are you going to do now?” Rabbi Lieff asked me.

“I don’t know. What should I do?”

“How about put on tefillin?”

“But I already did, during Shacharis this morning.”

“But you weren’t Jewish then.”

Good point.

I donned the straps for the first time as a kosher Jew on that August afternoon.

Two months later, I stood at the bimah and said “Baruch shepetarani.”  Yaakov’s bar mitzvah followed, and there I was, a Jewish father listening to a pshetl that was still beyond him, beaming with nachas as his son expounded and everyone listened and on the other side of the mechitzah, his wife wept tears of joy.

More than two decades later, I can now elaborate on that bar mitzvah pshetl. I, too, have joined Rabbi Moshe Weinberg’s shiur, and have been learning b’chavrusa with him every week for the last 25 years.

I’m on my third round of Daf Yomi; over the years, I’ve learned the daf with many friends and community members, with my children and grandchildren.

My family and I are an integral part of the St. Louis Park community. I’m Jewish through and through, and like that Conservative rabbi’s wry remark years ago, you could even call me a chassid.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1001)