Choosing a Jewish Life, Revised and Updated: A Handbook for People Converting to Judaism and for Their Family and Friends

That is the paradox at the heart of this book: To create the kind of Judaism that is worth choosing, we need to start by choosing Judaism.

Ours is not the only way to live, but it is the Jewish way—the particular example that illustrates the general rule that you can be different and yet human, strangers and yet the beloved children of God. I know of no other faith that has taught this principle so clearly, so consistently, so courageously. The

God loves diversity; He does not ask us all to serve Him in the same way. To each people He has set a challenge, and with the Jewish people He made a covenant, knowing that it takes time, centuries, millennia, to overcome the conflicts and injustices of the human situation, and that therefore each generation must hand on its ideals to the next, so

Judaism is God’s call to responsibility. He does not want us to rely on miracles. He does not want us to be dependent on others. He wants us to become His partners, recognising that what we have, we have from Him, but what we make of what we have is up to us, our choices and our effort.

As Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik has explained, the Torah is a covenant of being, not of doing.** The goal is the completion of being, the full realization of humanness. It is not a utilitarian contract designed for useful ends so that if the advantage is lost, the agreement is dropped. The covenant is a commitment on the part of each partner to be

I’m also moved by the Kabbalistic idea that people who feel called to convert to Judaism have souls that previously resided in the body of a Jew. I definitely know Jews by choice who, long before they converted, already felt like they had a Jewish soul.