Three American women recount what led them to convert to Judaism

One is a gay activist, the other fell in love, and another hails from the Bible Belt; unlikely stories of finding Judaism in one’s own image.

By Judy Maltz for Haaretz
Tera Greene had always felt at home among Jews. Her closest friends growing up were Jewish. Her colleagues later in life were Jewish. A formative figure in her life was her grandfather, who developed an affinity for all things Jewish while working at a kosher deli in Brooklyn. And most of her childhood summers were spent at overnight camps, where she learned to value one of the ultimate Jewish-American experiences.

Others might wonder why a 28-year-old disc jockey, who also happens to be black and openly gay, would want to convert to Judaism, but for Greene, it was the perfectly natural thing to do.

"Whatever I was searching for from a very young age, I found in Judaism," she says. "It was a perfect fit for me."

Greene, who lives in Los Angeles, underwent a Conservative conversion almost two years ago. Currently a fellow at Bend the Arc, a Jewish social justice organization based in California, she was a participant in a leadership and networking conference last year in Jerusalem, fellow in a Birthright Israel leadership program, and she took part in a program for educators organized by the grassroots Keshet organization in America, which promotes inclusion for the LGBT community in Jewish life. In her spare time she writes for the Jewish Journal Online's Oy Gay blog and for Challah Back, the NextGenJews blog of the Jewish Federations of North America.

For 35-year-old Leah Jones, it all began with a crush she developed on a Jewish acquaintance. "I decided that if I was going to make a move on him, I'd need to find out what this whole Jewish thing was about, so I bought myself a copy of 'The Complete Idiot's Guide to Understanding Judaism' [by Rabbi Benjamin Blech, 1999]."

Jones never ended up marrying the object of her crush. In fact, she never even dated him. But she did eventually become a Jew, undergoing a Reform conversion eight years ago.

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