My entire life I felt like an outsider. My family was loving and Christian. But I questioned everything and rebelled. As I grew older and was able to explore religion, my rebellious nature grew. I left my family’s Christianity and found a sect of my own. But that only brought more questions and more confusion.
Finally, I walked away from religion with no desire to return. I tried to fill the void I felt with many things – money, power, success, and vice – but to no avail. I thought I could perhaps become spiritual but not religious, but I was surprisingly repelled by mysticism and universalism.
The more I wrestled with the temptations of the world, the more the hole inside me grew, as well as the hunger to fill it with something meaningful. I was without identity and purpose and the worst part of it was that I knew it.
That’s when I randomly discovered Herman Wouk’s book, This Is My God, on a shelf of used and tattered books. Upon seeing it, I had a sneaking suspicion I had found a treasure in a heap of trash. I read it. I was not a Jew at that time, but I understood from this book what it was to be one – how joyous and meaningful it was to identify as a Jew. And having experienced the material world thoroughly by that point, I could testify that there was nothing in it that could compare to what Wouk described in This Is My God.
It was a book about a relationship with a creator that was powerful and bigger than me, that would love me enough to find me in the middle of my darkness and offer me a chance to draw close to Him in a way that brought meaning to life.
It’s interesting that a convert does not say Kaddish for his parents – because I think of all who gave birth to me: my mother, my father, the Orthodox rabbi who took me in and guided me through the conversion process, the beis din that converted me, my rabbis today who shape my identity, and, last but not least, Herman Wouk, who planted the seed.
Farewell, Herman Wouk, and thank you.