open thank-you letter

Dear –,

I am writing this here because I don’t know how to write you directly — and because what I have to say deals directly with my journey to the rabbinate, which this site chronicles. I am writing on the off-chance that you have found or will find my blog. I know it is at least a possibility. And if you don’t make your way here, I’ll feel better at least putting this out there in the universe.

I’ve thought about you often in the past year as I applied to rabbinical schools and reflected on my reasons for doing so. Almost every time I answered the question, “Why do you want to be a rabbi?” (and it’s been asked quite frequently, in various contexts), I alluded to you.

Things did not end well between us, and that still does not sit well with me. But I want to tell you how much I valued your support at the beginning of my Jewish journey. I’ve had the opportunity to tell everyone else who helped me along the way.

You were the first Jewish guy that I dated, and maybe the first Jew with whom I was close. You made the fairly obvious to most — but stunningly  liberating to me — observation that I did not have to remain in the religion of my family of origin. It was a revelation. And you knew of what you spoke, because your mother is a convert.

I went to shul with you for the first time, I opened a siddur with you for the first time, I stood on the bimah with you for the first time. You encouraged me to learn about Judaism, and you helped me to realize that I have a Jewish soul. You’re who I think of when reading Anita Diamant‘s words:

[T]he fact is , many people find a home in Judaism as a result of falling in love with a Jew. As one Jew-by-choice wrote, “What better way to discover Judaism than through love? People sometimes say deprecatingly, ‘Oh, she converted for marriage.’ Or, ‘Oh, he converted for her.’  . . . The point is: in these instances, the non-Jewish lover sees the beautiful in his beloved and identifies with it. What is it but the Jewishness of the Jew that he wants? And so he chooses to become a Jew himself. This is not something to scoff at.

It’s hard for me to see how I would have gotten here, on the cusp of the beginning of rabbinical school, without you. We did not last, but what I gained from you lasts yet.

Thank you.