Time for a Change

Susan had been raised in a conservative, if not repressive Baptist church where her father was the deacon, but from our earliest conversations when she was still sharing K's house, Susan had said she always felt an attraction to the Jewish faith-she had even researched and written on the Holocaust back in school. She had expressed her interest in my religion, Judaism, early on according to her, to her parents. She told me she  had told them that when she grew up she would be Jewish or it seemed tangentially at this point, Catholic. Upon our return from the reunion that never was trip, after paying my $250 speeding ticket, gained returning $89 shoes, Susan said she had a surprise for me. She was going to enroll in conversion classes and become Jewish. We were watching a PBS show about a small West Virginia community's Jewish population when a woman born Christian who had married a Jew there and converted said, "I took the name and I if I was woman enough to do that, I'd take the faith that went with it." Susan exclaimed, "That's it! That's exactly how I feel." Susan declared on the spot she was going to find and take conversion class with the intention of becoming Jewish. Here was the one opportunity I had to direct the relationship the way it should have been in my ideal world. I must explain my connection or lack thereof at the time to Nashville's organized Jewish community. I attended the Orthodox Jewish day school through second grade, always went to the Conservative congregation for services and Hebrew school through my bar mitzvah, but due to a financial reversal suffered by my father because of the collapse of Charter, an oil refining and publishing company, was no longer affiliated with any of the congregations after the 1979 bar mitzvah until the year 2000. No, I had not experienced any millennial epiphany-my father had affiliated Susan and I with a reformed congregation so I would have someplace to marry. So, when Susan embarked on her conversion process, she did so with my blessing and full support in spirit, but since I was not a member myself, without my active involvement to help integrate her into a congregation. This was the glaring failure on my part that may have been the turning point in our future as a couple. If I had eagerly spent a few thousand dollars to rejoin a shul and held her hand through the process, we might be married now with our Jewish children to raise together, but alas, this was not to be. I had a few other logs on the fire at that time-from seeking a business-either a restaurant or liquor store to purchase, to helping my Dad who literally seemed to be shrinking (he was, his spine collapsed, he had to endure five procedures, and he shrunk six inches), to helping maintain some properties we had. I felt if Susan's conversion was heartfelt, she would handle it herself splendidly.