Memoir The Craft

Three journeys, three memoirs, and one shared destination. Discover why you don't need a 'revelation' to join the tribe

When I first started typing my story like I was possessed, I had no idea what kind of adventure I was stepping into. Had I known, that familiar negative voice inside me would have shut the whole thing down after the first couple of sentences. Writing wasn’t “for me.” I’d never mastered punctuation or grammar in any language. But stuck in a small flat in a new country during endless lockdowns, I wrote anyway. It was that or lose my mind.

Choosing a title for my Jewish conversion memoir is like picking a tattoo: intensely personal. But unlike a tattoo, it’s on display for everyone to judge in an instant. Or maybe it’s more like naming a golem you’ve created—one you’ve spent ages with, puzzled over, and corrected It’s a strange challenge: how do you name a story about "becoming Jewish" for every reason except religion? I needed a title that summed up a year of identity experiments and "pretending"