CONVERSION | PERSONAL STATEMENTS

CONVERSION | PERSONAL STATEMENTS | MIKE WILLEY

A Personal Statement from Mike Willey

I want to start off by thanking all of you for coming today. Each of you took time out of your busy day to help Sharon, Peter, Stephen and me celebrate this important milestone in our lives. I say “our lives” because even though I am the one who is converting, my acceptance by this community as a Jew will touch all of us.

13 years ago my life changed dramatically, when I fell in love with and married the most wonderful woman in the world, who happened to be Jewish. When we got married, the way we decided to handle our religions was that Sharon would have hers, I would have mine, and if we were blessed with children we would raise them to be Jews.

Some of you may know that my Best Man out our wedding was my oldest son Stephen. Stephen had some tricky years when we were first married, trying to figure out where he stood with a new step-mother, a baby brother, and a two religion house. I am so proud of the man he has become and a value beyond words the support that he has given me since I made my decision to convert.

In December of 1997 we were blessed with a true miracle when Peter was born. Peter is a miracle because he has thrived even though he was born way too early, He is also a miracle because without him, I would have been content to keep attending my church, and might never explored my relationship to the Covenant between God and the Jewish People.

When Peter started religious school, I saw a blurb in the Window about Torah from the Beginning. Since most Christian churches neglect the Old Testament in teen and adult Bible study, I thought this would be a good chance for me to become familiar with that part of the Bible.

Robin Kosberg, who leads this class is a wonderful teacher, facilitator, and a true gem in this congregation. Our class is full of adults who truly want to understand Torah and Robin is great at getting us to explore and discover how Torah relates to us.

For the first year or two of study, I used pronouns like “you”, and “I” a lot, but as time progressed and my understanding deepened, I started using “we” more and more often. The more I understood about Judaism, the more I felt truly at home.

I grew to love the people, clergy, services, and holiday celebrations at our Temple. In my heart I felt Jewish and last summer I decided to make it official and convert. At first, I thought the process was unnecessarily complicated and time consuming, but what the heck, I’ll give it ago.

My first teacher in this process was Renee Karp. Renee helped me to understand that being Jewish is more than Torah and Mitzvot, being Jewish requires you to be part of a people who have a history spanning multiple millennia. I hadn’t read so much non-fiction since I was in college. I learned that conversion meant that I was tying my fate and the fate of my family to this people. I learned that along with the many joys of being a Jew, that there were many potential sorrows that I would be exposed to, and that my decision needed to be a well considered and sober one.

My next teachers were Connie Lust and Charles Pryzant in the Choosing Judaism class. Charles and Connie helped me explore my own heart through great class discussions, our weekly Journal entries and answering the 66 questions for Gerut. I learned a lot about myself during those months of study and I truly appreciate the dedication and joy that Connie and Charles brought to that process. My class mates in Choosing Judaism, became friends, and as we shared our stories and feelings, I think that we all learned from one another.

This spring, I had several sessions with Rabbi Robins, as the final steps in my conversion. Rabbi Robins, is not only kind, wise and a wonderful teacher. She had, in my case, the ability to see a very important area of potential self-conflict that might result from my conversion and gave me an exercise to help me understand and start to come to grips with my feelings and to start to think about how to move forward.

This time last year, I thought I was already a Jew. During this year of study and reflection I have come to understand the importance of being recognized by others as a Jew. It is important so that I can participate more fully in Peter’s Bar Mitzvah, and it is important because one of the unique things about being Jewish, is that you can’t really be Jewish until other Jews recognize that you are. It is more than a religion, it is also a community and a people.

I took my Hebrew name from the prophet Micah, who summed up Torah in this way:

He has shown you, oh man, what is right.
And what does the Lord require of you?
To do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.

Thank you Sharon, Peter, Stephen, Robin, Renee, Charles, Connie, Rabbi Robins and all of you, my extended Jewish family, for your help on my “walk with God” to this place, and for being here today to help celebrate this milestone in my life.