{"id":34709,"date":"2014-02-05T16:43:38","date_gmt":"2014-02-05T16:43:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ou.org\/life\/?p=34709"},"modified":"2014-02-05T16:43:38","modified_gmt":"2014-02-05T16:43:38","slug":"online-conversion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ou.org\/life\/inspiration\/online-conversion\/","title":{"rendered":"Convert Retrieves Her Soul from Cyberspace"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Dictionary<\/a>In 1993, nearly twenty years after Shoshana Zakar converted to Judaism, she found out she wasn\u2019t Jewish.<\/p>\n

Zakar had innocently posted a question to an online Jewish discussion group. The responses ultimately led her on a path that would dramatically change the lives of her and her family.<\/p>\n

Born in Spokane, Washington, Zakar didn\u2019t have much exposure to ideas about God and religion. \u201cReligion didn\u2019t play a part in our home life at all,\u201d she says. \u201cOther kids would go to church; I didn\u2019t.\u201d As a teenager, she began questioning life\u2019s meaning but found few satisfying answers. That is, until she took an innovative comparative philosophy class in her senior year in high school. The teacher invited representatives of different religions and life philosophies including Buddhism, humanism, Catholicism and Judaism, among others, to explain the \u201cwhat\u2019s\u201d and \u201cwhy\u2019s\u201d of their belief systems. While the other presenters waxed esoteric, Leo Matzner, a concentration camp survivor, spoke of Judaism\u2019s belief in one God and its emphasis on the afterlife\u2013whatever a person does in this world, he explained, affects his life in the World to Come. Zakar was captivated. \u201cHis words immediately grabbed me,\u201d she says. \u201cI felt good about a faith that says that whatever a person does\u00a0<\/i>is important. That was a turning point [for me].\u201d<\/p>\n

She hungered to learn more about Judaism but hesitated approaching anyone. So she went it alone. \u201cI read [any] Jewish books I could get my hands on,\u201d she says. One of them was the\u00a0siddur,<\/i>\u00a0from which she memorized the entire Amidah in English. All of seventeen, Zakar decided she wanted to convert. When she reported this to her parents, they were less than enthused, but consented to support her choice if she agreed to postpone the decision for a year.<\/p>\n

That year, she went off to Western Washington University. Feeling painfully far from home, she turned to Tom, a friend and practicing Christian, for solace. He convinced her that she\u2019d find her answers in Christianity. Zakar threw herself into the Christian coffeehouse scene on campus. \u201c[Often, a person] doesn\u2019t understand the difference between feeling warm and fuzzy and having a genuine spiritual experience. I felt connected and loved and mistook that for the truth.\u201d<\/p>\n

Zakar wrestled with the idea of the Trinity but kept her doubts to herself. \u201cIn Christianity you dare not ask questions,\u201d she says. \u201cIt shows a lack of faith.\u201d A telling moment forced the issue. It was October 1973, and the Campus Crusade for Christ held a social event. In the midst of the festivities, a student entered the room and relayed the news that Israel had been attacked. Zakar\u2019s visceral response took her by surprise. \u201cI felt sick,\u201d she recalls. \u201cI couldn\u2019t possibly stay there celebrating. I didn\u2019t feel part of it anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n

She saw graduating from college as an opportune time to make the final break with Christianity. She returned home to Spokane, accepted a job as a bank teller and decided to re-explore Judaism.<\/p>\n

The opportunity came that summer at a local fair. Zakar noticed a booth with a banner stating \u201cFree Soviet Jews.\u201d Approaching the booth, she realized she knew the individual manning it; it was Leo Matzner, the survivor who had spoken to her high school class about Judaism some years back. Zakar told him of her interest in Judaism, prompting an invitation to the synagogue where Matzner served as cantor. She accepted.<\/p>\n

Moved by the meeting, she wrote in her journal: \u201cIn many ways, I am a shy person and afraid to jump into the midst of this people on my own. Yet I trust God, and it seems that God is answering that trust. Last night the cantor himself invited me to come to services at Temple. I will go.\u201d<\/p>\n

She went Shabbat morning and, despite feeling a little disoriented while trying to follow the Hebrew prayers, she enjoyed the services. \u201cIt was the relief of having made the connection; just being there, in a synagogue, among Jews,\u201d says Zakar. \u201cI felt like an orphan who had found a family.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her introduction to Jewish worship and community occurred in a Conservative synagogue, the only shul in the city. \u201cI really had no counterpoint, [neither] to the right [nor] the left,\u201d says Zakar. Eventually, she decided to ask the rabbi about converting.<\/p>\n

The rabbi instructed her to join the synagogue\u2019s confirmation class, an hour-long session on Sunday mornings for post-Bar and Bat Mitzvah children covering Jewish history and holidays. Throughout her preparation, she was disturbed by an underlying attitude that conversion was no big deal.\u00a0<\/b>\u201c[The course] was not challenging or difficult. The whole process was just \u2018hoops\u2019 that I was given to jump through to make sure I was more or less serious,\u201d she says. \u201cI didn\u2019t understand that Jews don\u2019t really care whether or not someone becomes Jewish.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 1975, shortly after Pesach, the rabbi informed Zakar that he was planning to go ahead with the conversion. Excited that she was \u201cfinally going to be Jewish,\u201d she reviewed the Hebrew dates of the holidays, committed the order of the Hebrew months to memory, and chose the name Shoshana, a derivative of her English name Susan. The rabbi asked that she bring wine, cakes and cookies for the\u00a0kiddush<\/i>\u00a0afterwards. Zakar and several other \u201cwould-be converts\u201d were called individually into the rabbi\u2019s study, where they sat before the\u00a0beit din,<\/i>composed of the rabbi, the cantor and one of the officers of the synagogue. \u201cI was there for about ten minutes,\u201d reports Zakar. \u201cThe\u00a0beit din<\/i>\u00a0was satisfied [with my answers to their questions], and I was excused.\u201d The group went to an apartment complex housing an indoor pool. The rabbi instructed them to change into their swimsuits, and dunk into the water. \u201cWe repeated a solemn statement of commitment and dedication to God and Torah, Judaism and the Jewish people; then we made a blessing and dunked again,\u201d says Zakar. They were declared Jewish and returned to the synagogue for the\u00a0kiddush.<\/i><\/p>\n

Not too long after, Zakar moved to Laurel, Maryland, to accept a job offer as a government Russian translator. During this time, she met her husband-to-be, Joe, who was Jewish but not observant. The couple soon married and joined a local Conservative synagogue. \u201cWe felt that as Jews, we had a responsibility to support the general Jewish community,\u201d says Zakar.<\/p>\n

She gave birth to a son and then a daughter. As the family grew, the couple stopped attending services. \u201cIt didn\u2019t make sense to drag a baby to services, and neither of us was likely to go alone,\u201d says Zakar. \u201cI wondered how it was that I had lost that same feeling for God that I had had before the conversion. It seemed like the \u2018real world\u2019 just got in the way of spirituality.\u201d<\/p>\n

As Zakar had already learned, some of life\u2019s most important answers come from unexpected places. One evening, in April of 1993, Joe was busy posting messages on an online news discussion group, when his wife happened to glance over his shoulder. \u201cAre there any Jewish discussion groups out there?\u201d she asked. Within a few minutes, he located one, and it immediately captured Zakar\u2019s interest. \u201cI sat there for at least two hours, reading all kinds of messages from Jews of almost every persuasion.\u201d She decided to initiate a topic. \u201cWhy do Orthodox Jews have the view of women that they do; why aren\u2019t women allowed to read from the Torah, and why are they not counted as equals in a minyan?\u201d<\/p>\n

She received a flurry of interesting responses. Her spiritual appetite stirred, Zakar joined other Jewish discussion groups, feeling increasingly connected to her cyber\u00a0chevra<\/i>. \u201cI found a group of people who were actually interested in talking about Jewish subjects, about God and about religion,\u201d she says. \u201cI felt more comfortable asking hard questions \u2026 and much less isolated.\u201d<\/p>\n

No stranger to difficult questions, Rabbi Dovid Y.B. Kaufmann, director of campus activities for Chabad-Lubavitch of Louisiana and an adjunct professor at Tulane University, maintained an ongoing dialogue with Zakar and suggested she read a number of books that effectively address the role of women in Orthodox Judaism.1\u00a0That Shavuot, Zakar found herself sick in bed reading some of the suggested works. Subsequently, she admitted to her online mentor that her perception of the Orthodox view of women was \u201cflat out wrong.\u201d Reading all those books prompted her to rethink \u201cmany elements of her own Jewish lifestyle.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some of the new information she learned not only took her by surprise but left her shaken. The laws of family purity, for instance. \u201cI knew that when I converted, I had supposedly gone to a mikvah, but it was just a swimming pool; there was nothing \u2018natural\u2019 about it.\u201d She read that there should be no intervening substance between her body and the water. She had worn a bathing suit. \u201cI realized that there could be a very serious problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

Afraid to approach her husband, Zakar mulled over the worrisome repercussions of her situation for a day or two. One night, she couldn\u2019t sleep and finally turned to Joe and asked if he would object if she were to speak to an Orthodox rabbi about the potential mikvah problem. \u201cAs far as Joe was concerned, I was Jewish; he had no questions about it,\u201d says Zakar. \u201cStill, he said I should feel free to do whatever I needed to do in order to settle this in my own mind.\u201d She went up to bed and cried herself to sleep.<\/p>\n

At the suggestion of some of her Internet friends, she contacted Rabbi Zvi Teitelbaum, principal of the Yeshiva of Greater Washington in Silver Spring, Maryland, to set up an appointment. She handed him a letter she had prepared, detailing her spiritual journey. He read it carefully, as she silently waited for the verdict. \u201cIt seems clear to me that you are not Jewish,\u201d he said. \u201cI felt like I was returning my soul,\u201d says Zakar. \u201cIt was very difficult to hear, but I think it\u2019s important to hear the truth.\u201d Rabbi Teitelbaum talked about the effect her status would have on her children and possibly her marriage. He also brought up the possibility of her undergoing a kosher conversion. \u201cI had hoped that since I had been living as a Jew for eighteen years, an Orthodox conversion would be a [mere] formality. Repeat the mikvah, repeat the blessing, and that would be that.\u201d She soon learned that simply saying\u00a0<\/i>she wanted to become more observant would not suffice.<\/p>\n

She broke the news to her husband but fretted about telling David and Julie, her two children, who were twelve and nine at the time. \u201cHow strange it is\u2013I often worried about my kids ending up intermarried,\u201d she says. \u201cI never dreamed\u00a0I<\/i>\u00a0would.\u201d Joe agreed to do whatever necessary to help her resolve the situation, but also shared her concerns about the children\u2019s reactions. They decided to hold off telling them about the conversion problem and began, instead, to encourage the family to move towards greater observance. Zakar was concerned that taking on \u201cnew rules\u201d would stir negative feelings about Orthodox Judaism. \u201cHow do I approach this so they will understand how\u00a0mitzvot<\/i>\u00a0fulfill our lives, not imprison us?\u201d she wrote to her Internet friends.<\/b><\/p>\n

The family soon stopped shopping on Saturday and became more vigilant about keeping kosher inside and outside of the house. Zakar was pleasantly surprised to see her children\u2019s willingness to grow, despite the difficulties. \u201cBoth David and Julie seemed to accept \u2018Jews are not supposed to do this\u2019 as a sufficient answer,\u201d says Zakar.As she struggled to change the family lifestyle, she had to contend with accompanying feelings of guilt. She asked herself: \u201cIs my search for religious fulfillment and truth so important that I should make others suffer?\u201d When her son went on overnight field trips with his public school classmates, Zakar would pack kosher food provisions. \u201cI did my best to give him his favorite foods and lots of treats, but no delicacy compensated for the teasing that inevitably resulted from being \u2018different.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

News arrived that Rabbi Mendel Feldman, the\u00a0av beit din<\/i>\u00a0in Baltimore, was insistent that the Zakars move to a community with an Orthodox infrastructure before he would agree to the conversion. The Zakars put their house up for sale.<\/p>\n

Zakar prepared for her conversion with Rabbi Binyamin Field, director of religious life at Baltimore\u2019s Beth Tfiloh Dahan Community School\u2013meeting with him weekly. She also began shuttling her children the forty-five miles to and from Hebrew school, three days a week. To the Zakars\u2019 great relief, the children did not seem disturbed by the news that they would have to convert to Judaism. After informing David of the\u00a0brit dam<\/i>\u00a0requirement, he responded, \u201cYou\u2019re going to owe me for this one, Mom!\u201d She inquired as to the exact price. \u201cTen bucks and a trip to the arcade.\u201d They happily sealed the deal.<\/p>\n

On Friday morning of July 15, 1994, the day the conversions were scheduled to take place, Zakar and her children stood by the phone, waiting to hear when the ceremony would begin. The phone rang. Rabbi Feldman reported that the mikvah was broken and the conversion would have to be postponed until the following Monday. Zakar fought back tears; she had hoped to celebrate that Shabbat as a Jew. \u201cThe broken mikvah felt like a final test and a final preparation.\u201d<\/p>\n

That Monday, Zakar and her children finally immersed in the mikvah waters that would make them complete Jews. \u201cI stepped into the [mikvah] water, and a sea split before me,\u201d relates Zakar. \u201cI plunged beneath the surface, rising up to say the most important\u00a0berachah\u00a0<\/i>I had ever said in my life.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople ask what it was that caused me to begin this process. I tell them \u2026 much of it began because of my conversations over the Net \u2026 from the deeply honest and caring answers I received from friends that I have known, really just [from] the Net.\u201d<\/p>\n

The day after her conversion, Zakar wrote a message to the loyal online friends who accompanied her on so much of her journey. \u201cI just wanted to let you know that I have finally come home!\u201d<\/p>\n

This article was featured in Jewish Action\u00a0Summer 2006<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 1993, nearly twenty years after Shoshana Zakar converted to Judaism, she found out she wasn\u2019t Jewish. Zakar had innocently posted a question to an online Jewish discussion group. The responses ultimately led her on a path that would dramatically change the lives of her and her family. Born in Spokane, Washington, Zakar didn\u2019t have<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":62,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[85],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-inspiration"],"yoast_head":"\nConvert Retrieves Her Soul from Cyberspace - OU Life<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Years after her conversion to Judaism, a woman finds out she is not Jewish according to Jewish law.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ou.org\/life\/inspiration\/online-conversion\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Convert Retrieves Her Soul from Cyberspace - 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