King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has announced plans to organize an "interfaith conference" among Jews, Muslims, and Christians. He invites "representatives of all the monotheistic religions to meet with their brothers in faith" in Saudi Arabia, in order to foster "respect among the religions."

King Abdullah's initiative is excellent and extremely positive. A conference of openKing Abdullah and sincere dialogue between representatives of the three Abrahamic traditions can only be a step forward. My only concern is that the diversity of Islamic opinion be fully represented, but indications from the Saudi kingdom are that King Abdullah recognizes the negative impact of Wahhabism, Deobandism, and other fundamentalist sects on the future of Islam. I hope that Jewish and Christian representatives will participate in such a conference with confidence in their own revelations, and will not give way to "politically correct" accommodations with Wahhabism.

Jewish and Christian representatives should understand that mainstream Islamic tradition respects the People of the Book and expects their teachers and other advocates to present their viewpoint in a learned and insightful manner, and not to engage in nonsensical rhetoric intended to improve relations with the Muslims by offering empty compliments. Jews and Christians who meet with and enter into dialogue with Muslims should do so from a position of self-respect, not of self-abasement. I hope and expect that Muslims at such an event will conduct themselves similarly.

According to a recent survey, Americans are very likely to leave the faith into which they were born and brought up -- if you count shifts from one Protestant denomination to another, a whopping 44 percent of Americans have changed their religion. Our post about this a few weeks ago sparked some serious commentary, and ultimately inspired us to assemble a collection of American conversion stories. Below you'll find personal accounts of conversions to Judaism, Sikhism, Buddhism, Christian Science, and Islam. If you or someone you know has a conversion story to share, add to this collection in comments!

Torah Teresa Lane, United Methodist to Jewish: I converted to Judaism almost four years ago. I did a conservative conversion through a relatively formal class. As the only “non-coupled” person in the class, I was a bit of a novelty. It was kind of great, as it gave me an automatic air of sincerity, but it also meant that I got a lot of the question, “And why exactly are you converting?”

So here’s my answer: I grew up in a very Jewish area of St. Louis; I may be off on my stats, but I think my high school was about 40% Jewish. Then I went to a college, where, let’s just say, Hillel is a big deal. All my life most of my friends have been Jewish, so I felt somehow connected to Judaism in that way. Even though I grew up in the Midwest, I have very little concept of a world where Jews are an actual minority. Not long after college I dated a guy who brought me to a seder, and I was hooked (on Judaism; the guy didn’t last). I picked up books on Judaism (Heschel’s The Sabbath, Kushner’s To Life!) and decided to take an “Introduction to Judaism” class. The idea was just to learn some more, not necessarily to convert. But, to be honest, that statement about "learning some more" kind of sounds like BS now, even to me. I must have been searching for more than I consciously realized.

Four years after entering the mikveh, I’m not really observant. Which, it seems, a fair number of people find funny. All the same, there's a lot I love about Judaism. The way it celebrates life, the attitude of stumbling through life as best we can, trying to make it better, but having that mostly be enough. Even “Jewish guilt” (though because I don’t have a Jewish mother I may not be qualified to use that phrase) is so different from the Christian guilt of my adolescence that it’s hugely refreshing to me. I love the rituals of Judaism - lighting candles, hearing the same prayer over and over at services, the seder. I find them beautiful and comforting, even if they are still sort of foreign and a little bit stressful for me. Perhaps most of all I love the sense of belonging to a community, or at least knowing it’s there should I choose to become more involved.

I am sometimes jealous of people who grew up as Jews, who know all the little things that Jews just do, that they don’t teach you in a conversion class. But sometimes I know that I'm lucky to be without the baggage of memories of being shushed in services and dragged to Hebrew school; that I consequently have a unique opportunity to appreciate all the beauties of Judaism.

Daibutsu Buddha Brad Warner, Non-practicing Protestant to Zen Buddhist Monk: I'm not sure I ever really "converted" to Buddhism, because before I got into Buddhism I had no real religious affiliation at all.

When I was a kid I lived in Nairobi, Kenya for three years. There were a lot of Indian people and Indian culture around there. One of my dad's best friends was Indian and when we'd go over to his house I used to see all the paintings of Krishna and stuff. His wife and kids were vegetarians, which is something I'd never encountered back in Akron, Ohio, where I was from. I found all that fascinating. Later on when we returned to Ohio and I got to be a teenager, I started thinking a lot about death. That's what teenagers do, I suppose. But I had extra reasons since two of my aunts were, at the time, dying of an incurable genetic disease that I stood a good chance of inheriting myself.

I looked into Christianity but it all seemed so cheap and tawdry and fake. I was interested in Judaism as well, but it seemed too closed to outsiders. In college I looked for some kind of Indian religion to study, thinking that might be a more pure path. I could only find one course available and it was Zen Buddhism. I had no interest at all in Buddhism and would have taken absolutely any other Indian religion if it had been offered. But Zen Buddhism was all they had, so I took it.

The first day of the first class the teacher read this piece called the Heart Sutra, which contains the line "form is emptiness, emptiness is form." When I heard that I was hooked. I had no idea what the Hell it was supposed to mean, but I knew it was right. I'm still trying to work out what that line means...

The Golden Temple Sat Daya Singh, Roman Catholic to Sikh: I was raised Roman Catholic, and was first exposed to the Sikh path early in life, when a preschool friend was a Sikh. My next major contact was while living in New Mexico for a few months in 2005. Since I do not view Sikhism in purely religious terms, I do not feel like I ever left my previous religion. I look at my adoption of a Sikh lifestyle as an upgrade. Sikhism is not a religious-based dogma. The principles of a Sikh lifestyle (uncut hair, a vegetarian diet, constant meditation on God, selfless service, etc...) are used to illuminate the path to happiness. They are markers on a map up the mountain where the peak is unshakeable serenity. By being stronger in myself, my presence can help others.

My previous lifestyle was not bringing me as much serenity as I sought. I became much more stable and strong as a Sikh. It felt like upgrading from DOS to Mac OS/X. The most difficult part of my "upgrade" has been my dealings with my family. I can only compare it to experiences I have read of homosexuals coming out of the closet. Initially they were furious, and I can often sense their bewilderment in conversation.

Quran Stephen Suleyman Schwartz, Unaffiliated/Protestant to Muslim: A little more than a year ago, on February 19, 2007, I published a statement in Jewcy about my road to Islam. I have been asked to restate the story of my becoming Muslim in a simpler form. For many people in the U.S., it is obviously shocking to hear that someone with a “Jewish” family name became Muslim. (Elsewhere it is typically assumed I am of German Christian background.) Jews who react in this way often seem to forget that people with “Jewish” family names may not be halakhically Jewish. In my case, my mother came from a Protestant Christian family, and although my parents were leftist and antireligious, the first faith of which I gained detailed knowledge was Protestant Christianity.

I later explored Buddhism, Catholicism, and Judaism before becoming Muslim; my journeys took the form of travel, reading, and study. But I was not what we call in California a “shopper for God.” I was an intellectual with religious beliefs, not a compulsive joiner seeking a home. In my new book, The Other Islam: Sufism and the Road to Global Harmony, which will appear at the end of summer 2008 from Doubleday, I describe my encounter with the Jewish Kabbalah as a peak moment in my spiritual development. But my introduction to Kabbalah--which is so deeply influenced by Islamic mysticism or Sufism that it has been said that Kabbalah is Sufism in Jewish garments--proved a bridge to Islam for me.

My entry into Islam may be explained most basically as follows: the Islamic conception of God is simpler than that in the other monotheistic traditions; the Islamic path to God through Sufism is the most direct. I love Christianity and Judaism but Islam is rigorous in its rejection of anthropomorphism, i.e. equation of the form of the Creator with the form of the human being. This embodies, to me, a liberation of the mind. All the rest – the problems besetting the sacred Jewish people because of their small numbers, the infection of contemporary Islam with radicalism – are matters of human history, not religion. I found in Islam a purity very close to that in Judaism, but with a broader, more universal reach – Judaism for gentiles, as Saadiah Gaon argued. And since I was born a gentile, this path, which may seem more difficult to others but was simpler for me, beckoned. Finally, if I may be forgiven a bit of immodesty – Christianity and Judaism have a surfeit of modern intellectuals. Islam today needs intellectuals more than clerics, demagogues, or academics. And so in Islam I found a spiritual and rational place.

Star Of David Paul Widen, Protestant to Jewish: A few weeks ago I barged into the office of a shaliach that previously had declined to take my case before the special committee at the Ministry of Interior that decides who gets to convert (an illegal act, I later learned [his declination, not my barging into his office]). With his secretary as interpreter we were all sort of shouting for a few minutes, which I guess is what it took to make them realize that I'm serious and that I'm not giving up. However, they kept saying that I didn't have enough to show for myself ("What, you've only davened three times a day for six months?") and that my letters of recommendation were insufficient. I demanded that this shaliach see me again in a couple of months, at which time I assured him I'd have more to show for myself (e.g.,Yeshiva studies). He told me OK, to set up a meeting with the secretary. So the two of us went out of the rabbi's/shaliach's office and into the hallway, where we continued talking, and she asked, "What's the rush? Why don't you just wait for six months and then come back?"

I was incredulous. "I'm 30. I want to convert and get married and get on with my life." She wasn't convinced. "The Moshiach might come," I said, and this teenage, national-service excuse for a human being, started laughing at me. I got tears in my eyes and I said, "What are you laughing at? You know it's true, you know it's true." And I thought, "Wow, I almost believe this myself."

"Credo quia absurdum" as the saying goes. "I believe because it is absurd." To proclaim this impossibility, to demand this, to stay true to this hope every day when nothing in the world seems to ever hint that it will happen, that is how I see Judaism. Judaism tells me that there is something wrong with the world, that it's broken on a fundamental level. This appeals to me, because this is how I feel.

It is strange to long to be a part of religious community whose members are completely indifferent to my longing: It's even perceived as a bit suspicious, almost pathological. In one breath you can become a Christian or a Muslim: A simple prayer and you're a gold member. In Judaism, however, the potential proselyte is to be turned down thrice before being accepted: Thrice is the door to be slammed shut in his face. It's sort of like the movie Fight Club, where the candidates to Tyler Durden's nihilistic revolutionary club "Project Mayhem" are forced to stand at attention for three days while systematically being ridiculed by him for even trying to be accepted. Or, in a more tasteful metaphor, like Imre Kertesz's book Fateless, in which the Jewish protagonist is ostracized by his fellow inmates at the concentration camp because he doesn't speak Yiddish. "Di bist nischt ka jid, d'bist a shaygets. You're not a Jew, you're a Gentile," Kertesz writes. "That day I felt that I was struck by the same awkwardness, the same creeping insecurity that I remember from home, as if I didn't meet the criteria of the ideal, in one word: a little bit as if I were Jewish."

Christian Science Seal Kelly Riley, Catholic to Christian Science: I was raised Catholic, the youngest of eight siblings. We all went to Sunday school, we all went to catechism. At catechism they'd tell me that I was bad, that I was going to go to hell, just that I was inherently bad, and if you get hurt or sick, it's a punishment of some kind.

My oldest brother is nearly 20 years older than me, so I was still very young when he got married. They were Catholic also. His first child was born healthy, but his second child got very sick when he was one. Doctors were baffled, and despite taking the child everywhere, no one could heal him. Getting desperate, my sister-in-law remembered someone from her college days--one of her roommates--who was a Christian Science practitioner. She tracked her down and said, "My child is going to die in six months, can you help me?" Her old roommate, who was in New York, said she could help. She flew out to Michigan, stayed with them, and within a week she had healed the child. After that, my brother and sister-in-law said, "That's it, we're turning to Christian Science." My sister-in-law even became a practitioner. They had six kids, raised them all in Christian Science, and they all turned out super successful.

I remember times when I was a kid and I would get ill, and my parents--even though they were Catholic--would send me to my brother's house. My father just knew that something was good there. My sister-in-law would tell me that I was good, that God loved me. She was purely positive, which was confusing because it contradicted everything I'd been taught in Catechism and Sunday School. It was really hard to comprehend.

Eventually I grew up and moved out to California. I was in a horrible relationship--I was 22, living the good life, very rich in a big mansion, but I was living in hell. I was getting beaten by my husband. We're talking broken arms, broken legs--you name it, I've had it all. I had watched one of my sisters transform her life through Christian Science as well, and I would call her, locked in the bathroom after a beating, and she'd heal me over the phone.

Finally I said to myself, "That's it, I'm going to do it." My brother flew out, helped me get out of that marriage, and I came to Christian Science.

Jewish Symbols Michelle Golland, Psy.D., Catholic to Jewish: I was raised Catholic. We were religious when I was younger but even when my family really stopped attending church, I continued on after college. I even found a Catholic church when I moved away from home and up to San Francisco. In a way I was searching for a community but it seemed not to be found for me within Catholicism. I loved the pageantry and ritual but could not find comfort or peace in the dogma and lack of debate.

As a sophomore in college I started to explore different spiritual paths. I finally settled on Judaism because I felt inspired and challenged at the same time. I realized that while in Catholicism I was "being good" to get into heaven, Judaism was about "doing good" to experience "heaven on earth." I respond to the focus on the present, which is grounded in tradition and ritual.

My parents were supportive of my interest in and eventual conversion to Judaism, in part because they loved my boyfriend, Michael, who was Jewish. They were happy I was going to marry a "nice Jewish boy." This was important, because I tended to bring home more rebellious guys that frankly scared them a little. The struggle I have with my family of origin is not specifically religious, but more an issue of making different life choices overall. Inviting them in and creating a sense of inclusion was essential to fostering a happier relationship with them.

I have been a Jew for sixteen years. Soon I will have been a Jew longer than I was a Catholic. I actually look forward to that year, I guess because I believe I was waiting to discover my Jewishness my whole life. Who I am as a person, the things I long for, how I fight authority, the way I question things and want answers, the experience of having a personal connection with God which requires no middle man—whether that is Jesus or a Priest—feels at home and honored in Judaism.

I was always the child in the room pointing out the big elephant that nobody wanted to see. My catechism teacher—who finally kicked me out of class for asking too many inappropriate questions about birth control and abortion—would agree I am a much better Jew, because I failed miserably as a faith-filled Catholic. My spiritual awakening within Judaism has many layers that are still being discovered. The Torah for me is one big storybook that I choose to attach myself too. I gain insight, wisdom and hope from the reading of these stories, which are so beautifully filled with human flaws and struggles. As a Jew I don’t believe that any one religion or spiritual path is better or “true,” it’s just personal.

There is an emerging Islamic Counter-Reformation -- an attempt led by traditional Islamic scholars to try and wrest authority back from demagogues and terrorists.

In the late 90's and early parts of this century, Islamic clerics saw people like Bin Laden trying to wrest authority from them, the clerics came together and coalesced. With backing from the King of Jordan, they issued the historic Amman Message whose purpose was to try and eliminate the ideaRipe for reinterpretation? of takfir among Muslims. Takfir is the practice, by one Muslim, of casting another Muslim out of Islam (which then makes it permissible to attack the apostate). It had long been strictly forbidden by traditional clerics, but was revived by 20th century Islamists in order to make it easier for them to cleanse their opponents. Therefore, an attack against takfir was powerful attack against extremism (and, as I argued, an important forerunner of a more embracing view of apostates). Many of these scholars are trying to set up a centralized House of Fatwas which would only permit the power of fatwa to those who are adequately qualified.

Emboldened by the positive reception of the Amman Message, last year Islamic clerics then sent a conciliatory letter to the Pope. The gesture was received warmly by Pope Benedict (coming off his own controversial comments regarding Islam).

Seeing that conciliation and dialogue were beneficial (and getting picked up in the media), traditional clerics pressed ahead. Recently in India, 20,000 clerics declared terrorism un-Islamic. The act is significant because it comes out of the ultra-orthodox Deoband school. Also recently, the Department of Religious Affairs in Turkey, began to cull objectionable hadith narrations.

Today, Muslim clerics sent a "letter of harmony" to Jewish leaders as well, yet another positive development. It gets past the geo-political discussion and focuses squarely on matters of faith -- as many of us have long encouraged Muslim leaders to do. It says in part:

There is more in common between our religions and peoples than is known to each of us. It is precisely due to the urgent need to address such political problems as well as acknowledge our shared values that the establishment of an inter-religious dialogue between Jews and Muslims in our time is extremely important.

Failure to do so will be a missed opportunity. Memories of positive historical encounters will dim and the current problems will lead to an increasing rift and more common misunderstandings between us.

The initiative is being advanced by Akbar S. Ahmed, a former high-commissioner of Pakistan to Britain, and a well regarded public intellectual among Muslims.

This letter seems to be an initiative led by Western Muslim leaders. It has not come out of the Muslim majority world. In other words, it is just one baby step rather than anything historic. However, it does bode well as it comes on the heels of a declaration in Tikkun magazine by a prominent traditional cleric in America that holocaust denial is un-Islamic. The mere enunciation of such ideas is positive, as it arms clerics in other parts of the world to have precedent they can call upon.

Not only that, but many of the more conciliatory advances of traditional scholars around the world have had significant connection with Muslim leaders in the West. The pluralist and inter-faith Islam being developed in the Western world (as well as in India) seems to be going into the Muslim world and emboldening the pluralist minorities there. This, actually, has been a longstanding trend within Islamic history. The Islamic "fringes" -- i.e. the parts geographically closest to non-Muslims -- have always produced the more universalist and syncretic versions of Islam (i.e. Islamic Spain, Bosnia, and India) -- ironically, this historical trend directly contradicts Huntington's assertion about Islam's bloody borders; in fact, its actually the other way around.

If there is a hope for a reduction to anti-Semitism among Muslims, there will have to be more letters of harmony until Arab, Iranian and Indo-Pak scholars feel emboldened enough to take a stand on the matter as well. However, there will also have to be genuine scholarly works that deconstruct the various anti-Semitic interpretations that scholars have assigned to Jews in the past. An honest and modern interpretation of texts is as necessary as conciliatory letters.

The Pope: An ancient prayer is causing modern controversy A few years ago he pissed off Muslims around the world when he suggested that Islam was a religion of the sword. Today, Pope Benedict XVI has enraged the rest of the monotheistic family.

In a move that must have given both Ann Coulter and Mel Gibson hard-ons, the Pope has re-sanctioned an ancient Good Friday prayer which calls on God to illuminate the hearts of the Jews that they might recognize their savior Jesus Christ. To his credit, the Pope did choose to remove passages from the ancient Latin rite which referred to Jewish "blindness" and the need to "remove the veil from their hearts."

To the surprise of nobody, Jewish groups have got their knickers in a twist. The Italian Rabbinical Assembly has suspended its decades-long dialogue with the Church. And the Anti-Defamation League issued a statement which read:

"While we appreciate that some of the deprecatory language has been removed ... we are deeply troubled and disappointed that the framework and intention to petition God for Jews to accept Jesus as Lord was kept intact."

Walter Kasper, the Cardinal in charge of the Catholic Church's relations with Jews, has vigorously defended the Pope's decision. Kasper (who happens to be German) is perplexed by Jewish touchiness:

"I must say that I don't understand why Jews cannot accept that we can make use of our freedom to formulate our prayers. We think that reasonably this prayer cannot be an obstacle to dialogue because it reflects the faith of the Church and, furthermore, Jews have prayers in their liturgical texts that we Catholics don't like."

To those of us less naive about Jewish sensitivities, it is obvious that reintroducing this prayer into the liturgy would reopen old wounds. It harkens us back to a time when Christians looked at Jews the way Tom Cruise looks at a car accident.

Continue reading...

Our Tour Guide Shows Us What Masada Used to Look LikeWe wake at 4:45 to climb Masada for sunrise. It’s a bit cloudy so the sun isn’t as spectacular as I'd hoped, but it's spectacular enough to inspire me to snap about 7,000 pictures of it. I’m supremely irked by the fact that our counselors choose the exact 30 minutes during which the sun slowly emerges into blazing glory as the perfect time to lead songs and prayers. I routinely tune them out and am one of two or three people who completely ignore their request to put cameras away at the start of the service. I just can’t help myself: Here I am, standing on the edge of a cliff overlooking the Dead Sea, the lowest point on Earth, and the Judean desert—the likes of which I’ve only seen in nature documentaries. The sunlight is coloring the cliff faces rich shades of red and orange, and I’m supposed to turn my back and listen to singing I don’t understand or give a shit about? I don’t think so.

We spend about three hours on top of Masada. Though I can’t adjust to the beauty of these surreal surroundings, it’s our tour guide Offer’s lecture that really makes my visit memorable. He tells us the story of Masada in cliff-hanging detail (no pun intended) as he leads us through the ruins. I'm surrounded by remnants of a fabulous palace inhabited by a group of Jews called the Zealots 2,000 years ago. Descending Into the Zealots Ancient Water SystemPositioned at the edge of a cliff in the middle of the desert, the palace offered views of approaching enemies, a sophisticated water system, glorious balconies, and even a sauna. Life was dandy here until the Romans came and set up twelve camps at the bottom of the cliff, surrounding the Zealots, ready to conquer. The Zealots could either fight or surrender. They talked it over and reasoned if they fought, they’d lose and die. If they surrendered, they’d watch their wives get raped, be enslaved, and die. Since death was inevitable, they decided to die with dignity by committing mass suicide. They killed the women first, since the worst thing for a woman is to watch her child die. Then they killed the children, and then the men killed each other.

The account is probably an inflated, idealized version of history, but I’m not really thinking about that, because it was a good-ass story and I’m in awe of it. I recognize that I will never forget Offer’s final point, partly because he asked us to remember, and partly because of the natural phenomenon he demonstrates at the last stop on the mountain. We’re overlooking the valley where many Zealots supposedly plunged to their death. We face a smooth cliffside that looks like a paintbrush has freshly streaked it with burnt oranges and grayish browns.

Echoing Cliffs Around Masada“I’m going to tell you a phrase in Hebrew I never want you to forget,” Offer says. He teaches us the phrase. “Now, we’re going to shout these words as loudly as we can over this valley.” We face out and shout with all our might. Even I join in. A few seconds later our words echo back per-fect-ly. It’s like a Bizarro Birthright group is shouting back at us. We do it again. And again. “It means: Masada shall never fall again,” Offer says. “I want you to remember it because it means let us never have to choose between death and death. Let Israel never have to choose between death and death.”

At the end of the day, I want this place to be my “homeland” because I’m so amazed by what I've seen. Though I can’t say I feel a connection yet, I can say I’m finally thrilled and delighted to be here.

Previously: Day 3, or Judaism Vs. Feminism At The Western Wall