Conversion is an emotive subject in Judaism, and rarely have I seen the complexity of joining our community better articulated than in Alison Pick's new memoir. Pick, a successful novelist here and in her native Canada, grew up without Judaism in her life and without any real hunger for it - or indeed for any organised religion.
Yet, in a twist she did not discover until her late teens, both of her paternal grandparents were Jewish. They were refugees from Prague having escaped on the eve of the Holocaust, leaving behind the majority of their relatives and carving out new, faith-free lives once safely across the Atlantic. Pick's fascination with their story led to her exceptional, Man Booker longlisted novel Far To Go , set on the eve of the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia.
But the key word is "paternal". For when the adult Pick, battling depression and looking for answers, identifies a return to faith as her way forward, she discovers that she is placed on a par (and made just as unwelcome) in the faith as converts starting from scratch. Actually, she is even less welcome, since her non-Jewish fiancé isn't keen on relinquishing his atheism. Even the open-minded Reform rabbis of Toronto are unwilling to create an interfaith marriage.
Theirs may not be an illogical stance to those of us familiar with Judaism's idiosyncrasies, but for Pick - who yearns to come back into the fold of a faith she sees as her birthright - the situation is nothing short of unjust. "We're trying to make ourselves appear good enough, Jewish enough," she writes. "According to the Nazis, I would already be Jewish two times over."
Conversion to Judaism is usually discussed as a solution to an interfaith relationship; rarely is the relationship itself the obstacle. Rarely, too, is conversion depicted as something chosen, or sought. So Pick's utterly avoidable journey, made against advice and despite the heartache it causes her and her loved ones, makes for riveting reading.
Even beyond the obvious obstacles, Pick's conversion experience is no fairy-tale. Shabbat, she finds, is the perfect antidote to contemporary life but other aspects of the faith trouble her. She attends Friday-night dinners, encourages her father to learn more about the religion he was born into, and falls head over heels for Judaism's more spiritual elements. At the same time, she looks back at her family's history and develops a perverse fascination with the horrendous fates of various European relatives, seeking answers that can never be found.
She is candid about seeing Judaism as a path out of her depression, writing that, "it is as though everything unmet in me, all my aloneness, has finally found a point on which to fixate." And, as someone who struggles with much of what Judaism says about women, I found it difficult at times to understand what would make a liberal, intellectually curious woman willingly adopt the restrictions that are part and parcel of Jewish life.
Pick's story is not only about her desire to be accepted as a Jew; she writes candidly about overcoming depression, working as a writer, and the ups and downs of her relationship.
Some of the most moving scenes concern her longing for motherhood, rather than the Judaism that she sees as the answer to "everything unmet in me". Nor is it a wholly serious read; she offers the reader an array of entertaining anecdotes from her hipster lifestyle.
But it is the detail about conversion that fascinates; having never needed to want to be Jewish, for me it's eye-opening to read the thoughts of someone who so desperately does. An honest book that ought to start a conversation.
Jennifer Lipman is a freelance writer
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