Beit Din Personal Statement
There is a world not too dissimilar from our own where I fell into New Atheism.
I was raised by two atheists. My father was the son of a devout Irish Protestant mother and a father notable more for his profession, his race, and his drinking than anything else. Stories from my dad when I was growing up surrounded mostly his siblings—of whom I have only met a few—and not his parents. I met my grandfather once, but I was an infant, and he passed away soon after.
I remember my grandmother far better. I remember traveling to Tucson to visit her on my own, and the one time that she took me to Sunday school and church, where I colored in Noah's Ark, cartoony giraffes and elephants marching up the ramp with nigh human smiles on their faces. I remember moving to the church proper after, listening to the back half of the service. I remember, also, how upset my dad got at her for bringing me to church. I remember how, when he found out that a camp counselor had given me a Bible and spoken to me of his faith, he confiscated it and warned me about evangelism.
My mother was the daughter of a depressed engineer father, and her mother was the organist at her church. My maternal grandfather died by suicide before I was born, but we remained close to my grandmother. I remember my mother's ambivalence about my grandmother showing me Christian cartoons when I visited, and the way that she watched me closely when I was brought to her mother's church so that I could take a small tour of the pipe organ that she played on Sundays.
Throughout all of this, both of my parents remained strict atheists. My father derided the faithful. My mother prized skepticism and turned her nose up at the New Age, geriatric hippie culture of the town in which we lived. Both spoke of religion only off-hand, never deliberately, but their words were a warning for reasons I never could put together.
It was not until later in life that my mother admitted that she considered at one point bringing me to a church or two just so that I could experience a bit more of the world and understand the Protestant bubble in which we lived. She decided against it because she was not sure that my skepticism was sturdy enough, as a child.
In spite of all of this, that world is not this one. My path was different.
The direction that I have taken through life aside, I treasure all that I was given in childhood. I treasure the illicit church trip and the watchful eye of my mother. I treasure the careful skepticism that I learned from these two engineers, the way that they taught me to approach the world with open eyes and curiosity, but with care as well. I treasure, also, the ability to turn skepticism back on itself, to ask where it veers into cynicism and to keep myself from falling into those traps that made such a terrible mess of atheist spaces in the early decades of this century.
There is a world not too dissimilar from our own where I became a Buddhist.
On seeing my fascination with the movie “Little Buddha”, my father purchased me a copy of Herman Hesse's Siddhartha. I was perhaps twelve at the time, and he was dedicated to ensuring that I read as much as possible, and a variety of things other than the Star Wars and Redwall novels that might have otherwise been my fare. This was, I think, why he was fine offering me this book—this and the fact that I do not think he saw Buddhism as a ‘serious’ religion in the same way that, say, Christianity was.
This, however, took hold in a way that I imagine he had not expected. I became fixated on this idea of connection, compassion, and stillness. Meditation—specifically sitting meditation — often eluded me, and I would learn only later in life that I have a movement disorder that makes it quite difficult to stay still, and yet those ideas remained. This reading, these thoughts showed me that there was a wider world beyond just my family, my friends, my school. They showed me that there is more life than I can ever know, and that that is okay, that I can let go of the need for complete understanding and accept that not all of this is for me.
I confided in a few friends, but otherwise kept this to myself. After all, I knew that there were matters of faith and belief at stake, and so I knew to treat this with care. I kept it from my parents at first, though we later in life spoke about these ideas of connection, compassion, and stillness that informed a part of my youth.
In spite of all of this, that world is not this one.
My path took me elsewhere, but I still treasure those ideas. I still reach for that inward stillness. I still feel that compassion. I still acknowledge that wider view of the world that this exploration gave me, that view that told me ‘not all of this is for you’.
There is a world not too dissimilar from our own where I became a neopagan.
When I was in high school, I reconnected with friends I had made all the way back in childhood who had picked up on a spiritual engagement with the world. It was an undirected—or perhaps self-directed—animist take on spirituality. One where the world was more than it seemed, and thus so were we.
This was an exploration kickstarted by and surrounding a direct feeling of the numinous. There was something alluring to this idea of spiritual ecstasy: that ek stasis, the feeling of standing beside oneself and engaging with that ‘more’ of the world. I had a few experiences in high school that bowled me over with their sense of import, and the mystic within latched onto these.
I sought out some few frameworks to engage with them over the years: reading, vague attempts at ritual, reading, a few periods of experimenting with psychedelics, and lots of reading. I read stories, websites, books from the library and some that still sit on my shelves. I sought through these efforts to learn more about and feel more directly this sense of the numinous.
In spite of all this, that world is not this one.
I still experience those moments where I feel just how small I am in the grand scheme of things. I still yearn for that feeling of connectedness, that non-dualist sense of the divine in all things, that transcendence.
There are yet more worlds close to ours where some turn along the path of discernment led to some other me taking some other step—Taoism, Christianity, Islam—but those worlds are not this world. At each of these inflection points, that me—that atheist, that Buddhist, that neopagan—spirals off, and all I can do is wish them all the best.
Instead, I traveled onward and wound my way through my first few years of university.
One of my favorite classes I took during my undergrad, despite it having nothing to do with my major, was The History of Islam to the 1500s. The professor opened the first class of the semester by saying, “Your final will consist of one question: if an alien were to land on Earth in 1500 CE, why would they think that Islam was on the cusp of taking over the world? We’ll spend the next four months learning precisely that.”
I took the course on something more than a mere whim. Now that I was living away from my atheist parents, I had far more freedom to explore my lifelong interest in religion. If I were pressed, I could always say that it filled my elective credits for history, but were I to state what was in my heart, I would admit that I was direly interested in a spiritual life, but knew little other approach than an academic one.
It was a fascinating experience, and yet, being only one semester long, it only whet my appetite for more.
And so, in 2006, I signed up for a class that was essentially an introduction to Judaism course as offered by the history department at my university. The professor, an Orthodox gentleman, was endlessly kind, and truly distraught when I said that I would have to drop the course due to an overlap with another, required class. We spoke for nearly half an hour after my last course about what life was like, and how there was meaning that I was finding beyond just my curiosity into the history.
My reaction to this course went beyond that of my reaction to the history of Islam course.
In the three classes I managed to go to, a spark was kindled within me. I was introduced to a way of engaging with religion that went beyond scripture and dogma. I was introduced to the idea of community that reminded me of the best parts of groups surrounding my queer identity. It was a foretaste of both a set of ideas and a way of living that would stick with me for decades after.
I tried to keep up with reading after that. I read the Tanakh, then followed it up with a few other books—both fiction and non—and then, as is often the case when one is twenty, life got quite busy and pulled me in several directions. I did not have the stability required to engage fully. I was not rooted in my identity, and was unmoored in my studies (I began studying biochemistry before learning that I was truly terrible at chemistry, and soon switched to music composition). My mental health was deteriorating, and I grasped at words, not faith, to keep myself above water.
A decade later, in 2016, I began a sprawling writing project, and one portion of it was inspired by Kohelet, a book I had remembered enjoying quite a bit on my first trip through the Tanakh.
This led to another flash of interest that carried me through an additional year of writing and study. Once more, I found myself intrigued by this approach to faith, notably the endlessly inquisitive approach to divinity, the ceaseless asking of why, the arguments and debates that are integral to rabbinic Judaism. I even began looking into local congregations in Northern Colorado where I lived at the time.
Unfortunately, once more, my life was soon unmoored, this time by my erstwhile husband and I uprooting and moving from Colorado to Everett, Washington. My life became one of managing the move, managing his mental health, and managing my own as I wound my way through transition.
The interest remained, however, and that original project was published as a novel in the form of Qoheleth, followed by Toledot, Nevi’im, and Mitzvot, building the one story out into a series. I continued writing on the topic throughout my master’s program, with a portion of my thesis being observations of Job through the lens of transition and a disinterested identity.
Now that I was older, my anxieties surrounding this matter of identity had complicated beyond mere distraction. I was afraid that I was not worth it, that I would not bring anything with me that I might give back to such a community. I began to worry that I was in some way deficient, that I was lacking. I was not earnest enough in my interest, or I was only pretending at interest, or I was in some way appropriating my own interest. I worried that I was somehow faking this framework of an identity built up over two decades.
One must never question the anxious mind as to its reasons; the answer will only ever be nonsense.
And so I reached for a comfortable enough in which I could explore further. I began attending United Friends Meeting in Seattle in 2021, a Quaker meeting. I found some happiness there—and will miss fiercely some of the meetings for worship which passed in complete silence—but not quite the fulfillment that I had hoped.
What the Quakers offered me in the joy of silence, they failed to offer when it came to community. I realize now that, for the majority of Friends in that meeting, Quakerism is a thing that they did and that they believed, but not a thing that they were. I found meaning in the doing, and many of the beliefs I shared, but I struggled to find a sense of identity as a Quaker in those around me, and thus struggled to form it in myself.
I wonder at this, at times. There certainly is some sort of Quaker identity, and most of the Friends that I met called themselves Quakers as freely many that I know now call themselves Jews. There is something missing, however, and I suspect that it is a unifying force. A history. A shared set of rituals. Music. Words. Prayers. A way of being in the world.
My attendance wavered, and when some of the pressures they placed on my queer identity became too onerous, I stepped back, returning to reading and writing as much as I could. The series I had begun continued with three more books, and now I am working on a fourth, Kaddish.
It was not until after my husband left and the divorce was well under way in about 2024 that I was finally given enough time and mental space to begin this project of conversion. After discovering more about my Jewish ancestry—my maternal great-grandparents converted to Christianity, and my maternal grandfather changed his last name from Katz to Karr to further distance himself from any perceived Jewishness—I contacted Rabbi Kort in early autumn of 2025 and began to study in earnest, taking the URJ’s Introduction to Judaism course, a biblical Hebrew course through The Religion Department, and of course reading books by the handful.
Throughout, I have had the support of those around me, have been able to maintain a Jewish home, including keeping Shabbat and engaging with kashrut as I’m able (being vegan, this has taken some creativity). My friends and loved ones have encouraged me along the way, and several relationships have deepened because of this engagement.
I have found that that there is so, so much joy in community here, though I do at times struggle with a sense of awkwardness and a limited amount of engagement with others before I find myself tiring. When I am able to spend time at the synagogue or out at events (unexpectedly marching with TBO in Snohomish Pride is a memory that will stick with me forever), any of these moments with others have proven to me that there is welcome to be had if only I look, and the more I look, the more welcomed I feel.
Still, I know that I will always have to work to take into account the amount of social energy that I have, and it will take effort to truly find my place at Temple Beth Or; not, of course, that there isn’t one—I have only to look—but for me to feel settled here with this new chosen family will be an ongoing process.
Identity has played a big role in this. Accepting that I will be a Jew, that I will be entering into this covenant with all its own joys and sorrows, has come from looking inward at what makes me me and deciding that that can be as varied and complicated as it must for me to feel whole. I do not worry about antisemitism—or at least it does not factor into my identity; I will still doubtless worry!—because this is me being true to myself. Like my experience of a transgender identity, it is disinterested: it does not rely on reward or punishment to make me feel complete, and it can stand up in the face of bigotry.
Ritual, as well, is a thing that has proven as fulfilling as it was initially challenging. I found myself early on getting caught up on correctness. I worried that I was not saying the correct words or not saying them correctly, not taking the correct steps in the correct order, not being immediately right. It took some time for this sensation to calm, to understand that I will forever be working towards more correct each Shabbat, each festival or fast.
Here I believe that I was aided by my past experiences with ritual. This goes beyond just neopagan spaces; what, after all, is a Quaker Meeting for Worship but a ritual? Waiting at prescribed times in expectant silence with my coreligionists for a message to alight upon one of us that we may share feels like ritual.
Now, as much as I might at times miss that silence, I find that it has been, dare I say, comfortable falling into the ritual of Shabbat and the various holidays. I take comfort from lighting the candles on Friday evening, and again for havdalah. I take comfort in murmuring Modah Ani when first I wake and the Shema before I sleep. I relish every chance I get to visit the shul.
Knowledge has been the last sticking point, and here again, I have found my way forward through the same understanding: I do not know enough, but I have accepted that I will never know ‘enough’ for my own satisfaction. I can always learn more, and I have no plans to ever stop. I place ‘enough’ in qualifying quotes because there will always be more to learn for this step in the journey, and then the next.
I am looking forward to this step. It is the final of this long path, and at the same time, it is the first on the journey that is to come, welcomed as I hope to be among the people of Israel.