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April 28, 2006
Finding a Jewish path to follow
Women who elected to convert embrace all that their religious
education had to offer.
VERONIKA STEWART
While Audrey Chan and Elizabeth Friedman, both former Christians
and converts to Judaism, ended up in the same religion, each woman
had her own path to conversion.
As an anthropology student and a volunteer in the Jewish community,
Chan told family and friends she would never convert.
"Throughout this whole experience, people always said, 'you're
going to convert,' but I never thought I would until I came to work
at the Louis Brier," Chan said over the table in the conference
room at the Louis Brier Home and Hospital.
Chan began volunteering in the community more than five years ago,
after realizing it was time to give something back.
"There was a summer when we had a bus strike," Chan recalled.
"I used to work out at the Jewish Community Centre and people
always used to ask me why they let me work out there."
Chan said she began to wonder herself and, in order to repay the
generosity of the community, she began to volunteer at the centre.
She said after volunteering at the JCC, she switched her major from
nutrition to cultural anthropology. "To study people, it's
a huge investment of your time," she said. "You have to
participate."
Soft-spoken and polite, Chan said participation has been a key factor
in her decision to convert. She has been a fund-raiser at the Louis
Brier Jewish Aged Foundation for a little more than a year. As a
fund-raiser, she said, she has talked to people about being Jewish
and why it was important to invest in the community. "Through
that participation and interest, I discovered how meaningful it
is for me," said Chan, who is converting with Rabbi Claudio
Kaiser-Blueth at Beth Tikvah.
A major Jewish influence in Chan's life is 94-year-old Louis Brier
resident Lillian Halter. Chan met Halter as a volunteer at the home
five years ago.
"She fractured her wrist during a fall that morning. I was
just around, and they asked me if I would go to the emergency room
with her, and I think there was a nurse's strike that year as well,
so we ended up spending like 12 hours together in the emergency
room waiting for a doctor to help her," Chan reminisced. "And
we kind of bonded over that."
Chan said Halter's influence as a role model and a friend also makes
working at the Louis Brier more rewarding.
"For me, to end up working here, it makes it even better. It
makes fund-raising more meaningful for me because I could see who
the fund-raising benefits, as a volunteer. And being part of that
process is pretty rewarding," Chan said.
Although she spends a lot of time going to community events and
is very involved in the community, Chan said she has had some personal
struggles with her conversion.
"I think the most difficult thing was going from being an outsider
to being an insider. You want to view things from a different perspective,
but then you are immersed in it [the culture]," she said.
Despite the occasional transitional glitch, however, Chan said the
overall experience has been fulfilling.
"To study rituals and to study actions is very structural,
there's no depth to it," Chan said. "So to go from anthropology
into religion, for myself, it fills in all the gaps. I think there's
a certain kind of completion and enrichment in it, and I think that's
the reward."
Chan said that because she is single now, the question of whether
she'll marry Jewish is one that often comes up.
When she went to see one of the city's rabbis, she explained, "he
wanted me to understand what I was getting into and he asked me
if I intended to marry Jewish. And my answer at that time for him
was that you can have a Jewish partner and have him or her not be
supportive of your conversion.... That's also very likely. Because
I didn't know how to answer."
Now, however, Chan has clarified her response.
"I think the person that I ultimately marry has to understand
how much I love this community and my involvement, and I think that
he should be involved as well," Chan said. "It's most
likely that my partner will be Jewish, because he has to understand
what's meaningful for me, and my values."
Chan said not having a husband or in-laws to pressure her into converting
has allowed her to have the "freedom to make the right choice
and decide what's right for [her]."
"I'm not converting for anybody else," she said. "It's
nice to have that structure in place of a family, but I value being
able to do this on my own."
Unlike Chan, Friedman's path to Judaism did begin with her love
of a Jewish man.
"When I first met my husband, he very openly introduced me
to everything Jewish and I really loved all the ideas and the rituals
that he introduced me to," Friedman explained. "Then I
went on to explore Judaism myself, beyond his initial introduction.
It just became a very natural decision for me."
Friedman converted at Temple Sholom with Rabbi Philip Bregman. She
said because it's a Reform synagogue, she may have gotten a different
experience than she would have somewhere else.
"His method was not to press upon us any way what we were going
to be, but to give us a very broad scope of education and then to
allow us to make our own choices," she said.
Friedman added that, in addition to having a supportive rabbi, she
also had the support of her own family and the family of her husband.
She said that although her parents don't celebrate Jewish holidays
themselves, they send gifts and cards on Chanukah, recognize Passover
and have always respected her decision.
Friedman had a traditional Jewish wedding and said she plans on
raising her children as Jews and, hopefully, sending them to a Jewish
day school.
"I've made the decision that Judaism will be the tradition
that's carried on in our family, not the secular Christian tradition,"
Friedman said. "Because I've made that decision, I'd like the
values and the history and the language to be imparted to my children,
so they can get as much knowledge and education and identity as
Jewish people as they can."
She said that although she would like them to identify with their
Jewish heritage, if they decide to abandon the religion later on
in life, that's fine, too.
Although the couple doesn't have children yet, a baby may be in
their future.
"We're working on it," Friedman said.
Veronika Stewart is a freelance writer living in Vancouver.
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