Searching for the Perfect Title for my Jewish Conversion Memoir

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" without sounding like a religious text.

After multiple attempts, I’ve finally settled on what I believe is "The One". That said, after learning a bit about the publishing industry, I know that if, by some miracle, the book is traditionally published, the publisher might change it depending on the market or language.

For fun, here are some examples for movies, series and books.

Movies or Series

Jaws

French: Les Dents de la Mer → “The Teeth of the Sea”

Spanish: Tiburón → “Shark”

Die Hard

French: Piège de Cristal → “Crystal Trap”

Spanish: Jungla de Cristal → “Crystal Jungle” Hebrew: מת לחיות (Met Likhyot) → "Dying to Live"

The Hangover

French: Very Bad Trip → “Very Bad Trip”

Spanish: “¿Qué pasó ayer?” → “What Happened Yesterday?”

Hebrew: חתונה עוצרים בווגאס (Ba'derekh La'khatuna Otzrim Be'vegas) → "On the Way to the Wedding, We Stop in Vegas"

Home Alone

French: Maman, j’ai raté l’avion → “Mom, I Missed the Plane”

Spanish: Mi Pobre Angelito → “My Poor Little Angel”

Hebrew: ו אותי בבית (Shakh'chu Oti Ba'bayit) → “They Forgot Me at Home"

Nobody Wants This Hebrew טובים השניים (Tovim Ha'shnayim) →"Two are Better".

Cash Queens

French: Les Lionnes → “The Lionesses"

Spanish: Reinas del botín → “Loot Queens" בשבילה גיבורים עפי ם Bishvila Giborim Afim (For Her, Heroes Fly)

English: When Heroes Fly

French: Perdu en Amazonie → “Lost in the Amazon"

Books

Wild – Cheryl Strayed

French: Une vie à brûler → “A Life to Burn”

Spanish: Alguien como yo → “Someone Like Me” Hebrew: הולכת רחוק (Holekhet Rakhok) → “Going Far

The Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger

French: L’Attrape-cœurs → “The Heart Catcher”

Spanish: El guardián entre el centeno → “The Guardian in the Rye”

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone – J.K. Rowling

French: Harry Potter à l’école des sorciers → “Harry Potter at the School of Wizards”

Brave New World – Aldous Huxley

French: Le Meilleur des mondes → “The Best of Worlds”

Spanish: Un mundo feliz → “A Happy World”

I tried translating a few of my titles into French—and it quickly became clear that some would never work, even though they were perfectly good in English. Fascinating!

Back to my own title: it has been revealed to curious close friends, beta readers, and some agents reading my query letters—while others got alternate working titles I’d been experimenting with during different rewrites of my query.

But the “cutting room floor” is littered with decent, awful, passable, and laughably bad titles. Here’s a tiny peek at my identity crisis in progress (you must know: I love brainstorming):

Pretending for a Year – Honest, but too vague.

Claire the Convert – Accurate, but sounds like a children’s book sequel… or a chapter in a religious text.

Jewish-ish – Punchy but vague—and a mouthful to say.

The Daughter-in-Law Clause – Sounds like a pre-nup, but for in-laws.

Believing Was Optional – Feels like a slogan from an anti-motivational speech for athletes.

The Sincere Pretender – Easy No! There can only be one Pretender. They’ll always be a rock band, but I loved the oxymoron.

Accidental Jew – The idea is there, but “accidental” doesn’t quite fit.

Lying in Good Faith – Captures the pretender theme, but “lying” feels too negative.

My notebooks hold many more options. I treated the title search like a marketing campaign—I even tried SEO apps. They rated individual words but couldn’t measure the heart (or irony) of my story.

Handwritten list of potential memoir titles, brainstorming in progress.

A title is a slogan that ideally sticks—or intrigues someone enough to pick up a book and flip to the back cover.

So let’s play: imagine you are my agent or publisher. If you had to title

a memoir about a woman converting to Judaism for every reason except religion—in five words or less—what would you call it?