In honor of
National Coming Out Day
, Keshet will be sharing and celebrating coming out stories throughout the month of October. If you have a story you’d like to share,
let us know
!
When I entered the waters of the
mikveh
directly after my
bet din
for conversion to Judaism, my Jewish life began—but as Jew-by-choice, I felt like I was hiding a secret.
After my conversion folks treated me as an “average” part of the Jewish community, I was passing as a Jew-by-birth. This passing meant of a lot of different things. It allowed me to take leadership roles at my Hillel that I was previously barred from. It allowed me to function and be treated like everyone else within the Jewish community. To everyone else in my community, I was not any different. There were no invasive questions asked, just a slew of assumptions and a feeling that I was hiding.
As a Jew-by-choice I often feel forced into playing along as if I remember that time in my life where there was a bar or bat mitzvah every weekend, or that I know exactly what a stereotypical Jewish mother is like. I don’t have an answer when folks ask me what it was like to be in a Jewish military family because, while I came from a military family, I’m not from a Jewish military family. The assumption that my childhood looked like every other Jew’s silenced me and kept me from sharing stories of my non-Jewish past.
This feeling of keeping a secret was not a new one for me. By the time I came out as Jewish, I had already come out as queer. The feeling of “playing along” was, in many ways, akin to how I felt as a closeted youth. I feared that sharing parts of me would only mark me as different and knew that people don’t always take kindly to “others.”
So what do you do when you’re afraid of how people will react to your difference?
You pretend and make every attempt to pass.
In middle school I made up crushes and played along while the girls I sat with at lunch ogled over one celebrity or another. And, in college I would nod knowingly when someone talked about how Jewish mothers are or how their rabbi was terribly long winded.
I remember the first time that someone read my appearance as Jewish—I was ecstatic. I was passing with flying colors! But it wasn’t long until passing felt like erasure.
Being seen as Jewish did not leave room for my family. I didn’t have space to acknowledge that my curly hair was Puerto Rican and Cuban—or that Hanukkah and Passover time at my house looked a whole lot like Christmas and Easter. The passing was suffocating and I longed to take a deep breath.
I knew that the only way to breathe was to do what I’d done before: come out.
But this time I saw things differently. I’d been in queer circles where I was introduced to the idea of “inviting in” rather than “coming out.” Sharing this piece of me was my choice and an invitation to come in and share this part of my life—rather than handing over information in a way that would leave me feeling exposed and vulnerable. This coming out as a Jew-by-choice would be framed by my agency in sharing.
Now, every aspect of my life is enmeshed with Judaism. I moved to Boston from Georgia and have found myself in a population where Jewish people are not an anomaly. I’m a JOIN fellow seeking to find Jewish framework for the organizing that I do. I work as the Boston Community Organizer for Keshet bringing queer Jews together and moving Jewish institutions towards inclusion.
I chose to wrap my life up with Judaism and I acknowledge how that choice, if I’m not careful, would allow others to paint over my Jewish story with assumptions and wash my identity away.
During my conversion process I searched every nook and cranny of the internet for stories to relate to and voices that could speak to my own experience as a queer Jew-by-choice. I came up short, and felt pretty alone. I know that had someone else come before me it would have been easier. It is my hope that being a visible queer Jew-by-choice makes other’s searches just a little more fruitful. And maybe, just maybe I can be the hope Harvey Milk talked so much about—a hope that being visible makes room from someone else to live their truth.
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bat mitzvah
Pronounced: baht MITZ-vuh, also bahs MITZ-vuh and baht meetz-VAH, Origin: Hebrew, Jewish rite of passage for a girl, observed at age 12 or 13.
mitzvah
Pronounced: MITZ-vuh or meetz-VAH, Origin: Hebrew, commandment, also used to mean good deed.
