metadateagirl - Tumblr blog

[metadateagirl]

@wenevergotusedtoegypt I’m interested in your response to my post but it’s a little difficult to address over replies! If you care to chat over private asks etc that’s cool with me, but no pressure if you’d rather not~

[metadateagirl]

Something that I’ve always found interesting is the concept that you don’t “convert” to Judaism.

I’m not exactly sure what the source of this is – if anyone knows off the top of their head, go ahead and let me know (although I do want to study it, this is just a stream of consciousness).

I’ve wanted to convert for a long-ass time. Almost FIVE years, if you can believe it. To me that’s crazy. Especially because in those five years, I’ve gotten almost nothing done. I’ve talked to a few rabbis, I got involved in my college’s Jewish Student Union, but other than that I’m not technically any further along in the conversion process.

Throughout that time, I’ve gone on and off. For a few months at a time I will think of almost nothing else, I will tear through all the Jewish materials I can get my hands on, reading, thinking, loving every part of it. And then I will get discouraged. There’s something about Judaism – not just a religion, not just a faith, but also a very real group of people and a social culture, with many sub-cultures within it, but so unified at the same time. There are words, and phrases, and ways of life that are so normal, and when you have not been raised in a Jewish heritage you can get lost.

I’ve learned more about Judaism now; I know a little Hebrew, I know about major holidays and history, and I have picked up some vocabulary just by exposure. But not everything. And it’s easy to get discouraged when there is so much to learn, and you’re doing it alone.

Being alone as a “convert” is a topic for another time, but I want to come back to it.

The point is, that even after everything – after five years, after a million different instances of falling in love and then withdrawing again – Judaism is still in my heart. It still calls to me. I still can’t resist the beauty and character of the Jewish people, and I still know that someday it will be the right time for me to make the next step.

I want to go back to what I mentioned in the first paragraph, that you don’t convert to Judaism, the concept that people who convert have always been Jewish, it’s just that they needed to open their eyes to that world and learn about it and live in it.

For the first couple of years I was contemplating going through the conversion process, I didn’t understand this. I carried a lot of guilt and shame around being a non-Jew who went to Shabbat services and said the prayers on days like Yom Kippur. There were times when I tried to go to a service and I would stand outside the prayer room for a couple of minutes trying to muster the courage to go in, but I couldn’t, because I was sure that my silence during the songs I didn’t know the words to would give me away.

Let me note here that no Jew ever did anything to make me feel this way; it was all in my head, my own worry.

When you’re so concerned over whether you belong, it’s hard to see anything else. I never thought of myself as someone who had a Jewish soul, or someone who had once, in some existence, made a pact with that force which is Gd or the Universe. It’s a very human, worldly concept, to think that because of the family you are born into, you shouldn’t follow the song that your heart is trying to sing.

I think that after five years, I may not fully understand, but I understand better than I once did. I know that this urge to participate in Jewish life will never go away, and I know that the beliefs I carry about the world will always be affected by Judaism. I want to go through the “conversion” process, and when I am in a more stable place in life and able to find a synagogue that is able to support me in this I absolutely will.

However, I think that one of the hardest steps is already done. I’ve already accepted that this is the life I want to live, with my body and heart. The rest is commentary, I just need to learn.

[metadateagirl]

Star Trek - Captain James Kirk by Massimo Carnevale

[metadateagirl]

Maybe you should use your +8 to athletics for something other than jumping to conclusions

Rouge to fighter (via outofcontextdnd)

[metadateagirl]

HE’S GONNA DO IT!

[metadateagirl]

Librarians are hideous creatures of unimaginable power. And even if you could imagine their power, it would be illegal. It is absolutely illegal to even try to picture what such a being would be like. So just watch out for librarians, okay?

Cecil, Welcome to Night Vale: A Novel (via petit-branch-library)

[metadateagirl]

Tower of Williston Memorial Library, Mount Holyoke College

Photo courtesy of A.S. ‘14

[metadateagirl]

Reading List

[metadateagirl]

"Mr. Frodo, please," Samwise begs. "Frodon’t."

[metadateagirl]

Blogging about my experience with library donations…

Yesterday I was dropping off some books for donation and happened to notice one of their book sales actually going on so I checked it out. I walked into a room with rows and rows of books and my heart sank. Paperbacks went for $.25, hardbacks…

[metadateagirl]

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[metadateagirl]

A library is never complete. That’s the joy of it. We are always seeking one more book to add to our collection.

Catherynne M. Valente, The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There. (via falling-inlove-with-books)

[metadateagirl]

Baby got stacks!

Saw a photo like this of a bookstore and we had to make our own.

[metadateagirl]

Bookmarks made from old book spines.

[metadateagirl]

I wonder if full time librarians have eternal residual scanning beeps going through their heads

[metadateagirl]

[metadateagirl]

«Мышинная охота – зачёт, ловля крыс – отлично!»

Via Jane Winter