The first time I stepped into a synagogue, I was sixteen years old and hundreds of miles from home. It was a school trip to Atlanta. Back in my hometown of Lancaster, Ohio, the Jewish community had quietly faded; the synagogue closed several years before I was born. Still, Judaism never felt entirely absent. I had seen a Star of David on the town’s war memorial. I knew one classmate from a Christian-Jewish family. Later, as my Catholic high school’s quiz team traveled to other cities, I began meeting Jewish students more regularly.
Even through faded memories and secondhand glimpses, Judaism remained visible. And that visibility mattered. In a religious culture overwhelmingly Christian, the idea that another path existed — and was vibrantly alive — was quietly powerful.
Weeks before the trip, I looked up local services to attend as I knew the weekend coincided with the holiday of Shavuot. Only one synagogue was within walking distance of my hotel: The Temple on Peachtree Street. I had learned, even from afar, that synagogues often had security, so I called ahead to ask if I could attend. When I arrived at The Temple, I noticed the security guard by the door, something I never saw at a church in my hometown. The service wasn’t held in the grand historic sanctuary I’d seen online, but in a more modest space called the Covenant Chapel, meant to evoke the tents the Israelites lived in while wandering in the desert.
I slipped in quietly and sat near the back. Someone said, “chag sameach”, I didn’t know what that meant. They smiled as I said thank you.
Later in the service, the Book of Ruth was read aloud:
“Your people shall be my people, and your God my God.”
It wasn’t just a verse. It was a revelation. I felt spoken to, seen and I remember thinking, what are the odds I would hear this today? I knew — I didn’t just hope, I knew — that I was meant to be Jewish.
That moment became the axis around which the rest of my life would turn.
After the service, I picked up a copy of the “Atlanta Jewish Times”. I was stunned that an entire newspaper was published to support Jewish life. I kept it for years, a small signpost pointing to communities I hoped to one day enter. That paper reminded me that while organized Jewish life had faded from my hometown, in other locations it was evolving, modern, and still being written.
Back home in Ohio, I continued to wrestle with my search, which by this point had been going on for years. Not everyone in my family understood my draw to Judaism. My Catholic school taught about Judaism, but through a Christian lens. At times it was, perhaps unintentionally, framed as a past-tense religion. But I increasingly knew — from the war memorial, the Atlanta service, the quiet references to Jewish families who once lived in town — that Judaism wasn’t static. Jews in Lancaster had worshiped in a building that looked like a church, and even as a child I sensed that their practices were not the same as those in ancient Jerusalem. Judaism had changed. It was still changing. And by my junior year of high school, I knew I wanted to be part of that journey.
I didn’t feel I could check out Jewish books from the public library, but I read books when I visited, including some funded through an endowment left by the town’s former synagogue — a vanished congregation was still teaching. I eventually bought a “JPS Tanakh” from Barnes & Noble while on another quiz team trip. A Christian classmate gave me a Star of David necklace.
Other allies supported me in my studies, even in the absence of formal Jewish institutions. One summer the members of my high school football team rescued a 1973 Tanakh from a school library’s discard pile and gave it to me. This text continues to sit in my living room. Other Christian classmates listened with curiosity and openness. These acts kept my spirits up even during the lowest points with others close to me who did not understand my questioning and journey.
The real transformation, however, began at Capital University, a Lutheran college in Bexley, Ohio, where I enrolled at eighteen. I had applied to this college largely because I knew the Jewish community I had longed for would be nearby, if not vibrant on campus. Multiple synagogues were within walking distance, and within my first semester I enrolled at a nearby conversion class. I also benefited from Kollel classes that were open to the public and I was soon meeting Jews close to my age through a young adults group called Shabbat Connect. Critically, the university supported my efforts to rebuild Jewish life on campus. Within a few months, after discovering that the student group I had seen online before enrolling had gone inactive, I restarted the Jewish Student Association and became its president, before my conversion was even complete. University staff had preserved records of funds the previous Jewish student group had, which allowed us to start programming right away. This work helped me find my first internship, with Ohio Jewish Communities, a community affairs organization, and ultimately led to my first job after college, a two-year fellowship with Hillel at Ithaca College.
Six days after my official conversion in May 2015, I was called to the Torah for the first time. It was Shavuot. The holiday had come full circle. I chanted the blessings, received an aliyah, and returned to my seat holding back tears. That, not the mikvah, was my Sinai.
In the decade since, I’ve poured myself into Jewish life, volunteering with chevra kadisha societies, contributing to synagogues, and preserving community memory in places where Jewish presence has vanished. And yet, I still sometimes feel like a guest. I’ve been told I “don’t look Jewish” or asked what someone with my last name is “doing working for a Jewish organization.” But those moments, while painful, have not defined me. What has defined me is love: the love I received at synagogues that welcomed me, my supervisor at Hillel at Ithaca College who both mentored me and made me feel seen, and others, like a Chabad rabbi, who supported my early efforts at Capital University to grow Jewish life.
In America, Judaism is often the most visible non-Christian religion. That visibility can shape the imaginations of spiritual seekers. It shaped mine. Even in towns where Jewish life has faded, its traces remain — on war memorials, in library books, in stories passed between generations. Those traces are not just memories. They are invitations.
I believe that Jewish life — and American religious life more broadly — must preserve those invitations. Not by proselytizing, but by welcoming. Not by tolerating seekers, but by recognizing them as essential to the future.
Judaism does not belong only to the past. It belongs to everyone who, like Ruth, chooses to walk toward it. And in a pluralist society, the responsibility to make that path visible is one we all share.
Because someone, somewhere, is searching. Let’s make sure they know they’re not alone.
