What's It All About

In 1995, I formally converted to Judaism, taking my beit din with three Reform rabbis (two women and one man), and my mikvah at an Orthodox synagogue. Thrice I submerged myself and came up saying the magical prayer that turned me into a Jew. But, as my mentor explained to me, 'conversion was more a process of rearranging elements already in existence' than it was a complete and radical replacement of one 'self' for another 'self.' I have always felt a little Jewish, just as I'll always feel connected to my older cultural identities (Scottish/Irish/English) as well as to what I have learned and absorbed by religions I have studied and traditions I have admired.