This is a beginning.

Like many other beginnings, it begins with a spark. The spark in this case was a dream I had last year: "...The perspective switched back to me. I left the Christian convention. I had seen a few Jewish books at their booth, so I figured that there had to be some Jewish stores or a temple nearby. I saw two of them down one cobblestone street. Outside the door to the first store I saw many thick and beautiful books (inlaid with ivory and with gold filament lettering), but I knew the price was too high for me to pay. So I opened the double doors to the shop, and saw that it was actually a closet-sized converted fireplace. Placed carefully on racks were very ancient Torah scrolls with their respective commentaries. At the bottom were some ashes, and I immediately fell to my knees and sprinkled the ashes over my entire body."

It took me awhile (5 months from the time of that dream), but that day I began considering conversion. I had been studying Kabbalah (not the Phillip Berg kind) for awhile on the Exclusively Kabbalah list, but I hadn't seriously thought about Judaism as a religion.

Once I started going, it was a whirlwind of new things to learn and new people to meet. There were customs and rituals I had never heard of (although not all were unfamiliar). The experience has been rich and full of meaning.

But there has also been study and learning involved. I took a Judaism 101 course (although I missed a few classes) and learned a lot about Jewish History, Halakha, the Talmud, Jewish Philosophy, and a whole lot about people's opinions about these subjects.

So I'm going to be reading books and moving towards conversion, and I will attempt to document this process here.

B'shalom!