Ger, if I may ask, what made you convert? I promise I'm not baiting you, but I've been curious for a long time.
I don't think I myself entirely understand why I am converting. It is something that comes from far deeper within me than my reasoning mind. I can tell you some things, but they will actually be EFFECTS of whatever is driving me to become a Jew. In reality they are not the primary cause.
I resonate with the Jewish people, more than any other people, certainly more than my Celtic ethnicity, more even than my own American culture, and certainly more than Christian culture. There have been other cultures in my life I have found strangely, enexplicably attractive, such as the Lakota, or the Chinese. I have spent oodles of time studying these cultures, immersing myself in them, making friends with those who are a part of those cultures. But in the end, I was still me. Only with the Jews has it gone farther -- it is not simply an affinity, not simply a fascination, but an IDENTIFICATION, even though I'm not a Jew. It began very young, especially in my choices of which psalms to memorize, ie "If I forget thee O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth if I prefer not Jerusalem among my chief joys."
Part of it is simply the way I was raised. My father may have been a pastor, and my mother head of the sunday school, but we were Torah observant (and this was in the days before Messianic Judaism or any of its ideas). I found out a year ago that my great great grandmother was a Jew, and my suspicion is that my family simply functioned like a Converso family -- we remembered what to do long after we forgot why we did it.
The transformation began in EARNEST about 15 years ago when I had a repetitive nightmare that I was a Jew. If I went back to sleep, I would go back into the same terrifying dream. It went on night after night for quite some time, and I believe that in some way, it changed me. After, I find I simply cannot speak of the holocaust or listen to talk about it (casually OR seriously) the way I once did.
I spent about 15 years "running away," by which I mean that I became convinced that conversion was not for me, and to avoid the angst, it was necessary to avoid Orthodox Jews, and everything about Orthodoxy.
A year ago in February, I walked into a Messianic shul which was unusual. It was a Hashivenu congregation, meaning it was mostly Jews, and obligatory Torah observance for Jews was preached. The liturgy was Orthodox liturgy. To hear Hebrew prayers sung again, to see the Torah scrolls... basically that was all it took to wake up everything I had tried so hard to put to sleep. within a few months, I was "double dipping," meaning I attended the MJ congregation, but was also attending an Orthodox shul. I had started observing Shabbat again.
And that's when I discovered great great grandmother.
For years I had told the Hebrew Catholics I counciled, "If *I* were to find out that, like you, I were of Hebrew ancestry, I would immediately become observant and do all I can to resolve my issues of status with the Jewish community. And so, now, I'm doing exactly what I said I would.
And a big part of it was simply living within Christian community for 46 years, and being an advocate for Israel, and feeling the tension grow. Sigh* I'm just SO DONE WITH THAT. There are others to carry on that work, which IS valuable. But it's like knocking my forehead against a brick wall most of the time, and SUCH A HEADACHE. There were so many occasions where there was this freaky deaky thing when *I* would be sounding like the Jew, and the Jewish-Christian sounding like the goy. like, WHAT'S WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE???? It felt insane.
Basically, the time to leave had come.