Some of the Tough Things - Many people are aware of a tradition that when someone wants to convert to Judaism, they are warned off and even denied three times by a rabbi. If someone can stick through being denied, then they are accepted. I never really thought about people trying to warn me off the idea, with any serious intent. But once, someone responded to the idea of my converting with, "Isn't three thousand years of persecution enough to warn you off?"

I still have never seen, first-hard, real anti-semitism in action. I have friends who have been asked "Can I see your horns?" This completely baffles me, that this still exists, especially since I was raised in Ohio, in a Protestant family & church, in a Catholic neighborhood, and never heard such nonsense in my life. I was taught (constantly) that Judaism was wonderful, amazing, and worthy of respect and study. [My rabbi comments this is a great testament to the family and church that raised me.]

But at the same time, I was never really taught what kind of hideous human behavior was really perpetrated down through the centuries, against Jews. Sure, I knew there was a thing called "pogroms" in Russian history, and I knew the line from Fiddler on the Roof, "May G-d bless and keep the Czar... Far away from us!" But I'd never really read about the atrocities commited during these pogroms. I knew the Holocaust was mind-shatteringly horrible, had read and seen "Diary of Anne Frank," and had a generic understanding of the deaths of six million Jews (and several million others), but I hadn't studied it in any depth.

I'm reading a book called "Jewish Literacy" by Rabbi Joseph Telushkin. The subtitle reads, "The most important things to know about the Jewish religion, its people, and its history." Part 1 is labeled "Bible," Part 2 "The Second Commonwealth, the Mishna, and the Talmud," Part 3 "Early Medieval Period: Under Islam and Christianity," Part 4 "Late Medieval Period," Part 5 "Modern Period--Western and Eastern Europe," Part 6 "Zionism and Israel," Part 7 "The Holocaust," Part 8 "American-Jewish Life," Part 9 "Soviet Jewry," Part 10 "Antisemitism," Part 11 "Jewish Texts," Part 12 "Jewish Ethics and Basic Beliefs," Part 13 "The Hebrew Calendar and Jewish Holidays," Part 14 "Life Cycle," and Part 15 "Synagogue and Prayers."

I just started reading Part 7, "The Holocaust."

Even reading some of the sections in Parts 3-6, I've shed tears reading about history. I can tell this chapter is going to be very difficult to read. This morning, it was all I could do to keep reading a paragraph about an eye-witness account to a mass-murder in the Ukraine (an Einsatzgruppen massacre).

How can I not say "these are my people?" when I'm sobbing over their deaths?

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Today's Blessing That I'm Thankful For: The grace and protection of growing up in the era and place I'm in now