Local Jews talk about their journeys to Judasim

At one time, Ember Beck thought that she would be able to satisfy her growing curiosity about Judaism through study and the occasional visit to the synagogue.

But all of a sudden, she said, it wasn’t enough. “I realized when people asked me” about religion, “I got really angry that I couldn’t say I was Jewish.”

These feelings were what prompted Beck, 48, to undergo a Reconstructionist conversion last August.

Born in Mississippi, Beck said her parents converted from Southern Baptist to Catholicism, before she was born. She was told that her father’s “mother had a nervous breakdown,” as a result.

And in the years since, conversion has been “a big deal in my family,” Beck said, as her siblings have converted to different religions, including Buddhism and Mormonism.

But it wasn’t until one of Beck’s brothers became engaged to a Jewish woman that she found herself wanting to learn more about Judaism.

“I wanted to understand the wedding,” Beck said. As she read and studied, she found she liked the “emphasis on learning and developing” and how “all of these facets of everyday life have been thoroughly explored.” Now, “15 books later, here I am.”

Choosing Judaism

Other local Jews started their path to Judaism in other places.

For Kathy Lindenbaum, a New Jersey native who is now a Spanish professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, it was because her husband, Keith, was Jewish.

Before they were married, Lindenbaum said, the couple traveled through Europe and spent eight months living in Israel and participating in an ulpan, an intensive Hebrew language program. The connections she established on that trip influenced her later decision to undergo a Conservative conversion.

At first, Lindenbaum said she was a little uncomfortable with areas of Judaism she was least knowledgeable about, including attending synagogue. But now she reads from Torah “all the time” at Congregation Beth Israel, where she belongs with her family. “That creates a strong connection for me. I have continued to grow as a Jew.”

Mary Runge, 63, of Manitowoc, underwent a Reform conversion two years ago, but she became interested in Judaism when she was still in college.

At that time, “I felt very connected” to Judaism, but “didn’t pursue it” aside from taking some classes, she said.

But the “next big step” came for Runge when her daughter, Cantor Heather (Feffer) Havilio, formerly of Congregation Sinai, decided to convert to Judaism during her freshman year of college.

That “threw me back into the Jewish world,” Runge said. And after attending synagogue with her daughter, she said she “really began to question, ‘What was really happening with me?’”

Runge, who is married to a United Church of Christ minister, said that her daughter’s conversion “jarred” her and led her to rethink her beliefs. “I was struggling.”

Though she “always had the belief that we are here on this earth to live our lives in the light of God” and to “make life better for other people” she didn’t feel those messages “fit into the Christian religion,” she said.

“I really just fit in with the Jewish beliefs,” she said. “They are a part of my soul and a part of the way I live my life.”

Her work in healthcare administration with Horizon Hospice fits closely into her spiritual life, she said. “Hospice has always been a ministry to me.”

Ashram to Sherman Park

For Eytan Grinnell, 66, Judaism was the next step in a spiritual journey he began in 1968, when he moved to India from his hometown in the San Francisco area.

Grinnell lived in India in the Sri Aurobindo Ashram for about 15 years, where he said he received a “very good foundation for ultimately becoming Jewish.”

In 1989, Grinnell traveled to San Diego to visit Esther, a friend who became his wife. He never returned to India.

They married in 1990, and together became more interested in Judaism, first joining a Reconstructionist congregation in San Diego.

However, that involvement “was not adequate,” Grinnell said. “A belief in God seemed to be optional” and that “wasn’t very interesting to us.”

After attending a more observant synagogue with friends, the Grinnells underwent an Orthodox conversion in 1998.

“It just seemed that the observant, Chassidic approach to being Jewish was what made the most sense,” Grinnell said. “What attracted us to it is the combination of the spiritual and psychological that is expected,” Grinnell said, and “also the fact the Jewish approach to what we call spiritual is very much a matter of being in the world and functioning in it, as well as making it a place where God feels comfortable.”

The couple soon felt they needed “a more intensive learning situation,” Grinnell said.
They learned from friends about the Jewish community in the Sherman Park neighborhood of Milwaukee. After looking into the community, including Congregation Beth Jehudah, the couple was stunned by their feelings. “[We thought,] ‘This is kind of scary because we think we might do this.’” They moved to Milwaukee in May 2004.

“In a certain sense, I’d been everywhere else,” Grinnell said of his choices about Judaism. A 30-year practitioner of various forms of alternative medicine, Grinnell now does life coaching and homeopathic consulting, in addition to acting as an administrator for Kosher Supervisors of Wisconsin.

From the inside out

Beck, a member of Congregation Shir Hadash, admitted that as a Catholic, “I always had these doubts. I had to force myself to believe.”

The Catholic view of “absolving sins” and the fact that “you never had to try to mend relationships” made Beck uneasy. “It just didn’t make sense. If we were made to be rational beings it should make sense. Judaism is more rational that way.”

In her job as a licensed professional counselor, Beck said she has faced challenges since her conversion. “I get asked to do Christian counseling,” she said, so she needs to make sure her clients are aware of her Jewish beliefs. As a result, one referral chose not to work with her. Some people find it “hard to swallow” that she left Christianity, Beck said.

Despite this, she hopes to “add more observance to her life” and is thinking of exploring a second conversion in the future.

Though Runge’s husband is a minister, he has “always been very accepting. He is always respectful of people’s faith journeys,” she said.

Runge’s eldest daughter “struggled” with her sister and mother’s conversions, and has sometimes felt distant from them. Runge’s youngest daughter, 24, however, “has been part of the synagogue since she was little.” She has been exposed to both of her parents’ religions, Runge said, and will eventually make her own choices.

Lindenbaum, who was raised Catholic, said one of the reasons she converted was so that her children would have a single religious identity. When she first converted, her mother felt like she had somehow gone wrong, Lindenbaum said. “It certainly took her some time to accept,” she said.

But Lindenbaum’s mother came to terms with it when she saw how much more her grandchildren were learning about religion in their classes at Milwaukee Jewish Day School then her other grandchildren, who are Catholics.

Grinnell and his wife, who both have adult children who are not Jewish from previous relationships, said his increased observance has “improved all of the relationships” because it “gives a way to focus on a set of values that are very clear.”

Grinnell said he has found everything he was looking for in the Milwaukee community. “It has only developed, not disappointed,” he said.