On my personal Facebook page, I have been doing semi-regular live videos wherein I let my friends ask me any question they want about Judaism. Two sessions ago, I received questions about my daughters and their thoughts on conversion and growing up Jewish. I thought it only appropriate to ask them and let them tell their stories. They graciously helped out, and I’m including their stories below.

Anat is now 13, bat mitzvah, and preparing for high school, and is an incredible artist. She’s in NJHS, band, and is my super sensitive, empathic, immensely creative soul. She also has ADHD and social anxiety, which can make things difficult, but she works hard to find workarounds that help her.

Binah is my 11 year old warrior-healer. As quick to hug as she is to fight, Binah makes others her priority. She is active, daring, and has a love of sharks and marine life that comes from deep within. Binah always confounds me with how she artfully balances the two seeming extremes of her personality.

Anat’s first Jewish memory was a toss-up between receiving her Hebrew name (Anat) and Purim carnivals. Anat was in first grade at the time, so it’s not surprising that she doesn’t remember any of the more complicated things, and mostly remembers the fun, party style events. Friends were integral to her experience, and both she and I recounted the group of girls she would be with every week in the religious school wing of the first synagogue we attended.

Binah, having been younger at the time we came to a Jewish community, remembered Hanukkah the most. This amuses me as a prior religious school teacher; every K-3 student’s favorite holiday is Hanukkah, and it’s always the next holiday coming up. Binah especially remembered me teaching her how the candles were to be placed and lit in the menorah, watching the candlelight at night. She was always excited about being Jewish and proud of her family and community.

When I asked if they remembered anything other than their Jewish experience, both responded that they felt as though they had been Jewish all their lives already. Conversion seemed to simply be a formality that they’d missed (attending mikveh, for example) due to being a military family. They were blessedly spared the complexities and nuances of converting as an adult, for which I am personally thankful.

When it came to the actual process of conversion, Anat and Binah were already studying and learning in religious school and Hebrew school, and that was all that was required of them. They absolutely loved the experience and the friends that they made in the Jewish community. In the middle of the process, we switched synagogue membership for personal reasons, something about which I worried night and day. We already moved enough as a military family, what would switching synagogues do to them? In the end, both Anat and Binah informed me that they felt much more comfortable in the new synagogue, which we all still refer to as our home community.

Now, Anat expresses the same frustrations that I did in my last post. The lack of a community has hit us all quite hard, and we’ve all felt isolated and off the derech, so to speak. She wants to celebrate the holidays with a community like we used to, and have a group where she is not the other anymore. Binah, too, misses her friends, and misses religious school. And while Binah may enjoy sharing and educating her new friends on base, Anat is tired of the questions and having to explain and being made to feel “other.”

I think that comes down to the differences in their age, and the difference between elementary and middle school life. Anat just wants to fit in and get through her teen years, while Binah still has the leeway to stand out and be different without peer pressure smacking her down.

As far as their experiences with antisemitism? Well, they surprised me. Anat felt a lot of anger; we’ve been far removed from the worst of it, even though we’ve experienced our own. Anat would prefer that she can be with our community, to stand with her peers and protest and make change in the world. Binah, on the other hand, finds comfort in the ways in which we help each other after a tragedy, and how we come together as a community, and she wishes she could be there to bring comfort and aid to those affected.

The conversation encompassed much more than just these topics, but much of it was about our upcoming move. Anat and Binah are both very much looking forward to having a community at our next duty station and no longer being the only Jewish kids in their classes. Or, at the very least, not being the only Jewish family on base. They were both incredibly insightful when talking about ways in which we have fallen out of observance and other ways in which we have worked to remain observant, and the reasons why.

I may write about that some other time, but for now, I take comfort in the fact that both my children have found comfort in maintaining their Jewish identity, even when separated from a community. Even when they have faced criticism for it. And especially when tragedy strikes, they have held on to their faith, fiercely and lovingly.