Finding my tribe...Converting from Christianity to Judaism: My Spiritual Journey

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2N761jj7X5w

Children go where I send thee…How will I send thee, oh! I’m gonna send thee one-by-one…

Many people ask what it was like to “give up on Jesus” or the church and convert to Judaism.  My answer is simple.  I never gave up on Jesus, because I never had a very Christian view of him to begin with. (Oh, and in case anyone forgot, Jesus was Jewish, a fact so poignantly depicted in one my favorite paintings, “White Crucifixion” by Marc Chagall.  He’s always been a part of my spiritual journey and even now, Jesus is still very much on my spirit team!)

No, I did not lose my faith; instead, I found all the parts of traditional religion I loved in Judaism and got to leave behind the parts of Christian dogma that never really fit me, anyway. 

Take for instance, the Ralph Stanley song above.  It’s one of my all-time favorite bluegrass songs that I grew up listening to.  Turns out, Nefesh Mountain, a Jewish bluegrass duo, has a song very like it, which I heard while frying up donuts for Hanukkah and listening to the Hanukkah station on Pandora one of my first years as a practicing (but still not converted) Jewish person.  Examples like that happen all the time.  Something I thought I “lost” in Christianity turns up in Judaism, albeit with a Semitic twist!

There is a Jewish teaching around the festival of Shavuot that all Jewish souls (even converts) were present at the time of the giving of the 10 Commandments.  All Jewish souls were always accounted for, even if they hadn’t yet been born.  My soul was one of those present at that gathering.  I am certain of it.

My view of God as a cloud (vs. as a person, Father, human Deity), my desire to have a Shema ring in Hebrew rather than my seminary cross, my vocational call that sounded very like the Jewish teaching of Tikkun Olam (putting the broken pieces of the world back together), my favorite Episcopal Hymn (Torah Ora) and my most powerful sermon proclaiming that I didn’t know Jesus, but did have an enduring connection to the Most High God, were all signs in retrospect that I was better suited to a different tribe than the one I had been exposed to growing up.

But perhaps my biggest connection to Judaism is its focus not on what one believes, but how one lives.  As a person who has best practiced my faith through feeding the homeless or doing acts of service, Judaism’s commitment to LIVE by the tenets of the faith, regardless of any specific dogmatic beliefs, was most appealing to me.  The commitment to fighting for the underdogs and for justice for all people (because we know what it was like to live through slavery in Egypt), the commitment to celebrating life with joy and good food (Jewish one gs are next-level!), and being generally, just decent human beings (Jewish temples were the kindest religious communities to my neuro-divergent children and to me), was the biggest attraction.  That, and challah and grape juice beat communion wafers any day of the week and twice on Sunday!

Although joining a new religious community was not without its challenges, thankfully, as someone who is naturally gifted with languages, I was able to pick up on Hebrew fairly quickly (and thanks to the transliteration texts of the Reform siddur!), and the rest of the culture just felt like home.

The freedom to believe, and to be (at least in the Reform movement), while still connected to ancient texts and traditions, has been such a spiritually nourishing environment for me to heal and to grow.  That, coupled with the Jewish tradition of debating and discourse—to explore ideas from a variety of perspectives, created the base for me to feel comfortable exploring my spirituality more and more.  It was a great pleasure to find out that Tarot has its roots in Jewish mysticism, and I’m still inspired by the midrash teachings of rabbis of old.  Poignant, practical, and timeless…

After years worshipping privately as a Jew, and then publicly with a congregation in Florida, I decided to make my commitment permanent, and I converted.

However, it wasn’t until years later that I really became a Jew—I had an adult b’nai mitzvah in 2023, with several other members of my then-congregation in Everett, WA—when I read from the Torah and was called up to the bima by my Jewish name: Tzipi Meirav.

My Hebrew name was chosen with much care and with a LOT of deliberation.  Growing up I was always told that my birth name, Kiah, meant “beautiful, exotic bird” in Hawaiian.  However, in my last 9 months as a canvasser, meeting Hawaiians on the street, I can say, unequivocally, that my name (at least as it is spelled), is definitely NOT Hawaiian!  However, I wanted to give a nod to the meaning as I knew it growing up and picked a variant of Tzipporah (which does mean “little bird” in Hebrew).  My middle name, Shannon, given to me by my grandma (and my main ancestor guardian), means “wise old river” and is based on the River Shannon, in Ireland.  I wanted to choose an aspirational name with a water theme (I almost went with Yardena, the feminine form of the Yarden, or Jordan River, since my mom had planned to name me Jordan, before my aunt suggested Kiah), but settled on Meirav, or abundance, eliciting the image of a waters overflowing your cup (like the Ace of Cups). 

When you combine my experience as an Episcopal priest-turned-Jewish convert, who studies Tarot and astrology, guided heavily by my Virgo moon energies, you get this…

Hi!  This is Kiah, and I am your Zippy Dippy Squarepants. It’s time to learn some “Life Lessons from Zippy!”