A Convert’s Bible Stories

A well-thumbed book from my Lutheran childhood is now the ideal text for my Shavuot study and reflection

Before I began studying to convert to Judaism, Shavuot was totally unknown to me. But once I learned more about it, I saw a number of reasons to view it as the Jewish holiday that converts could celebrate most enthusiastically.

The Book of Ruth, one of the Bible’s best-known conversion stories, is read every Shavuot. As we commemorate the day when the Jews received the Torah, we are told that all Jews throughout history were present at Sinai, no matter what our background or place in history might be—a particularly comforting notion for people who are more recent members of the tribe. And observance of Shavuot includes intense study of Jewish texts, something we converts know a great deal about.

My bookshelves are filled with a range of Jewish books: two long, packed rows containing instructions on Jewish practice, memoirs, all kinds of historical nonfiction, Siddurim, haggadot, various commentaries, copies of the Tanakh and the Torah—all Jewish texts I studied during my conversion process. But there, tucked between my copy of Etz Hayim and my English/Hebrew JTS Tanakh, is a worn and faded volume that would seem to be in the wrong place—a 1955 edition of Egermeier’s Bible Story Book, a collection of narratives from the “Old” and New Testaments, rewritten for children and produced by the Gospel Trumpet Company, a Christian publisher. Despite its history, this non-Jewish text, which I first read decades before my conversion, carries special meaning for me as a convert on Shavuot.

The book is a memento of my childhood in Dayton, Ohio. Some pages include marginalia in youthful handwriting, mostly my younger brother’s. The title page is adorned with a tunic-attired stick figure, drawn by my little sister sometime before she entered kindergarten. The binding is completely broken—a couple of signatures will slide out of the book if it is not opened carefully. Tellingly, when it is closed, one can see that the edges of the pages of the first two-thirds of the book are darker and more worn than the rest. That is because, though the book belonged to my siblings as well as to me, I was the one who spent the most time with it. Throughout my childhood, I returned again and again and again to the stories contained in what I now know as the Tanakh.

Continue reading.