kosher bookworm: alan jay gerber

A spark is ignited and a Jewish soul lives

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We live in interesting times that witness murder as state policy and also brazen and often violent religious intolerance.

These are also times, by contrast, of religious tolerance in many quarters between Judaism and Christianity, a spiritual give and take that would have been unheard of just a century ago. 

Among this spiritual transference of belief that peaked my interest was a meeting I had in Jerusalem this past August with the two authors, both converts to Judaism, Michaela Lawson and Ashirah Yosefah. Their joint work, “Spark Ignited” (Menorah Books), hits a raw spiritual nerve of any reader sensitive enough to appreciate the sacrifice these ladies went through in their spiritual journey to our faith.

My having met these two intelligent and sensitive people was among the most inspiring experiences of an already exciting trip. In the words to follow I will use their individual thoughts to present to you a method of thinking that may prove both challenging and refreshing.

In her essay in this book, Ashirah shares with us the following that I found timely to the calendar at this time of year. This is just a hint as to her thinking on so sensitive a matter as change of faith. Consider this:

“There is a saying in Hebrew, ‘Ein mikreh, ha’col mi Hashem,’ which translates as, ‘There are no coincidences, everything is from Hashem.’ And so it was that, in 1995, I happened to meet the Orthodox rabbi of my hometown, where I was working. … This rabbi was frequently ‘out and about,’ active in interfaith dialogue, yet for some reason we had never met once during the previous 40 years of my life. Forty. What an amazing number in Torah: Transformation, maturation, change.

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