OUTPOURING OF THE SOUL Throughout Shira Yehudit’s journey she kept journals into which she poured her questions and pain and wrote poetry

M ishpacha writer Shira Yehudit Djalilmand sits in her home in Tzfat in a room lined with seforim wearing a white beret and a sweater against the autumn chill. She has a long fair English face with round blue eyes and her manner is calm composed even regal.

Seeing her today it’s hard to believe this was once a girl who came to school with half her hair dyed orange and the other half black best known for outrageous behavior and a punk rock wardrobe. For close to 30 years Shira Yehudit was a square peg that her parents and teachers tried to force into a round hole. All it accomplished was to leave her bruised and bleeding and her elders exasperated.

She wasn’t Jewish but her soul thirsted for purpose and meaning. No one in her middle-class British circles could offer it to her or even comprehend the compulsion to search. Like a wild animal trapped in a cage her soul thrashed wildly against the bars until she saw no other solution than to blunt the pain with alcohol drugs even attempts at suicide.

Fleeing the spiritual wasteland of her youth Shira Yehudit traveled widely through Europe and North Africa. While spiritual seekers in cartoons scale mountains in the East in search of wisdom-dispensing gurus Shira Yehudit ultimately found her spiritual treasure on the top of a Middle Eastern mountain in the mystical city of Tzfat. There she converted and remained to marry and raise a family simultaneously developing a career as a writer.

Shira Yehudit has documented her difficult path from angry tormented non-Jew to serene Jewish mother in a new memoir Rebel with A Cause (Mekor Press). It’s a gripping read.

Why would a person who describes herself as introverted and somewhat shy undertake to go public about a sometimes-sordid past? “I decided to tell the story to demonstrate the miracles that Hashem did for me to pull me out of the abyss and bring me home to Yiddishkeit” she says. “I hope to inspire other Jews religious or not-yet to really see in action Hashem’s incredible hashgachah pratit …

“There are many converts within Am Israel. My story just happens to be somewhat more dramatic than average and so perhaps it has rather more of the ‘wow’ factor.”

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Shira Yehudit grew up in the West Midlands and then West Yorkshire in a “perfectly normal upstanding middle class English family.” It was a less overprotective era hence she spent a lot of time happily wandering alone around fields and forests and hiking with her parents through the moors on weekends. “I still connect to Hashem through nature ” she says. “How can anyone possibly fail to recognize the existence of a Creator when they see all the natural wonders and the incredible intricacy of our world?” She has brought up her children to share her love and appreciation of nature: “We have an annual family subscription to the National Parks and Nature Reserves of Israel and our vacations are spent hiking through wadis climbing mountains — well hills really Israel doesn’t exactly have many mountains! — and jumping into hidden pools.”

Her childhood school performance was spotty; she was a quick study who enjoyed learning and excelled in academics and sports but had no tolerance for teachers she didn’t respect. While her older brother was a docile model student Shira Yehudit was a troublemaker.

As she got older the usual adolescent tendencies to rebel and individuate were exacerbated by her parents’ intolerance and her own inability to discern an adult path that made sense to her.