About

I am an Orthodox Jewish convert having completed a 7 year long process of Orthodox Jewish conversion.  My path was not straight and took many surprising turns, including a move from Florida to Alaska and then, 6 years later, to Wisconsin.  I had to face many of my fears during that journey as well as overcome a lot of obstacles.  There were times it felt hopeless or even like I’d lost my way.

It’s easy to look back now and see how everything unfolded for my good, but there were times I cried as I prayed and couldn’t see how this all could work out.

This blog is called The Safek because, as I began my own conversion journey, we discovered issues with his halkahic status, meaning that under Jewish law, Rabbis were unsure whether or not he really was a Jew due to issues with his mother’s conversion before he was born and a subsequent gerus l’ chumrah (conversion to remove doubt) that he had before his bar mitzvah.  Our whole family lived in a difficult in between space for 7 years, but especially him as his status as a Jew was called a “Safek,” which means question.  He wasn’t a Jew, but he also wasn’t not a Jew…not until a Rabbinical Court could answer the question that he was.

And don’t we all find ourselves in those awkward in between places in life, waiting for our questions or prayers to be answered and uncertain about the future?

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