A rebbitzin remembers the rabbi who converted her

By Mary Soltz

SCARSDALE, New York — I daresay how I came to be here tonight is a different story than most of our congregants’. On the first day of Rosh Hashanah, Ned spoke of faith and asked if any of us had been moved by a fervor that would change our lives, a moment of faith where we could definitely say that we believe. I feel myself very lucky to have had such a life-changing moment.

As some of you know, I grew up in the Marine Corps — my father was a career officer, and I was born at Camp LeJeune, North Carolina, and lived on several Marine bases as a child. My family continued to move around even after my father retired from the service. By the time I was in college, I’d lived in 11 different places, all over the country. It was hard moving all the time, always being the new kid in school. My only sister was 6 years older than me, so I was on my own for friends and playmates.

We attended church sporadically since my parents weren’t exactly on the same page, religiously. By the time I was in ninth grade, I knew for certain that I didn’t believe in Christianity. When I was in my second year of college, at the University of California, San Diego, a year-long course in Cultural Traditions was required. The year before, European Cultural Traditions was offered and that was what I wanted to take – studying the history, philosophy, art, music of Medieval and Renaissance Europe. But it wasn’t offered my year, and all I had to choose from was African-American or Judaic Cultural Traditions. My mother, as a committed Lutheran, wanted me to take Judaic, thinking I would finally “get some religion”, which she sorely wanted me to accept.

I registered for Judaic Cultural Traditions, and was introduced to Judaism for the very first time at age 19. The professor was Samuel Penner, a Conservative rabbi from the Bronx, who had recently accepted a congregation in the San Diego area. Our only textbook was the JPS translation of the Tanach. I know what happened next, but why it happened……. God only knows.…..

I began to read the Bible for the first time in my life. We started with Bereshit, and I found myself mesmerized by Rabbi Penner. He didn’t teach about Judaism in the way that made me always shy away from religion — religion, God, me? Heavens no! But something in the way he presented it enough of his classes, eager to learn more about Judaism.

The first quarter ended at winter break and I spent those couple weeks reading whatever books I could purchase on my limited budget at the college bookstore. My parents and I went to Christmas Eve services at a Lutheran church where there were two Christmas trees, one adorned in only white lights, symbolizing a life with Jesus, and one in red lights, symbolizing a life without. Naturally, the white lights were brighter and prettier. That ticked me off!

Back to school I went in early January and I moved on to the next quarter’s class, taught by a different professor. My roommate and I spent the first Friday evening sitting on the floor of our dorm room, having the deep discussions college students have. I knew I was attracted to Judaism, and Janice and I logically thought about the differences in Judaism and Christianity. We agreed that both Judaism and Christianity taught love of God and love of our fellow humans. Beyond that, there were the secondary trappings — at least, that’s how it seemed to me. That’s what attracted me to Judaism — the Jewish life, mitzvot, the order of the service —– being able to walk into any synagogue in the world and feel at home, at any time in the past several hundred years and the liturgy would be familiar. Then it happened.

There was a knock on our door. I swear there was – and Janice heard it too. It was God coming to tell me that I should be Jewish. As simple as that.

And the beautiful thing was that God told Janice to be a better Christian. It felt very natural and comfortable and being typical females, we cried a bit and hugged, feeling so comfortable with what had just happened.

The next morning – Shabbat of course! – we were walking to the cafeteria, the same walk we took every morning. Both of us stopped dead in our tracks at the same moment and looked to our right and exclaimed, “Where did that tree come from?!” There was a tree that hadn’t been there the day before. That was our true sign from God. To this day, trees call to me. Ever since I was a little girl, I’ve loved forests. Maybe that was why God sent a tree to validate the knock on the door?

I called Rabbi Penner the next Monday and told him what had happened and that I wanted to convert to Judaism. He remembered me as the girl who sat in the front row with the long red hair who always asked questions. He told me that according to tradition, he must tell me three times not to convert, but he said he knew that wouldn’t change my mind, so we may as well get started and I began to study privately with him.

Of course, I had to tell my parents….. That was one of my better performances, I must say. I took the bus from school to a flute lesson in downtown San Diego once a week, and soon on one flute lesson day, I stopped by my father’s office. Luckily he was in, and we went outside to talk. For this I really must say a huge Al Cheyt……. When a 19 year old girl very seriously tells her father that she has something to tell him, what’s the only thing he’s going to assume? Anything would be better than my being pregnant! My father was accepting of my plans, not being at all religious himself, though he was always an honorable and moral man. My mother, however, was another story. I took the bus home and had to break the news to her. She was shocked, to say the least, and terribly hurt, but she held it all together and took me back to school. A few days later, my married sister came to visit and I told her. She as well as my dad, wasn’t at all religious, and was ok with my decision, though she hadn’t the foggiest idea of why I’d do it! My grandmother was really shocked and vocal about it for many years. My father always told her to keep her mouth shut about it. He was a great dad!

Rabbi Penner had a long reading list for me, and I started coming to Shabbat services. Four months later, I was ready for conversion. There was no kosher mikveh in San Diego at the time, so I went to the beach with two Jewish boys from college as my witnesses. It was a cold blustery May morning, when I said the b’rachot and went into the world’s largest mikveh (with a bathing suit on!). The following Sunday afternoon, at Rabbi Penner’s synagogue, I had a conversion ceremony with two rabbis and a learned layman. My family always did the proper and right thing, no matter how much it may have hurt. So they were all there to witness a beautiful ceremony – my parents, grandmother, aunt, uncle and cousins. My grandmother had made me a gorgeous ivory linen dress for the occasion. Cursing me out with every stitch, but she made it nonetheless and came to support me. What must my father have said to her?! Another very special aunt from out of state had recently been to Israel and had gotten a Magen David for me which I put on just as the ceremony finished. I never felt more proud. My parents even held a reception for me at home, complete with the good dishes and silver. I was so honored that Rabbi Penner and his wife came to our home. After I went back to school, they stayed and talked to my parents. For the rest of her life, my mother spoke very highly of him.

It was terribly hard to cause my parents, especially my mother, so much pain, and I don’t know that she ever really understood why I did what I did. It was a while before I was even able to articulate that what I was desperately seeking was a community, somewhere to always have a home. What I never could tell my parents directly was that even though I loved them dearly, my up-bringing was lacking in the nurturing community I was seeking. Moving around as we did caused a huge need in me and Judaism offered me a way to fill that need. I hadn’t realized that I was seeking a home, an inviting place to call my own and settle down, somewhere I could really belong. A community?

Back at school, I immediately changed my major from Music to an Independent Study in Jewish Studies, with Rabbi Penner as my advisor. It was wonderful — before every quarter, Rabbi Penner decided on 3 or 4 courses and a reading list. I sat in the library every day, all day, and read. Each course had a final paper and there was an overall final paper at the end, “Personal Reflections on Some Significant Aspects of Judaism in Different Ages”. I had to discuss it with Rabbi Penner and two other professors. I learned how to handle rabbis at an early age – I managed to steer my answers in such a way that Rabbi Penner jumped in to talk, and I just let him take the ball and run with it. Another Al Cheyt?!

As I approached college graduation, I felt I needed to move away from home, mainly to put a little distance between my mother and myself, not wanting her to be reminded of my Judaism every day. I applied to the Navy and went off to Officer Candidate School at age 21 in 1973. While my four years in the Navy weren’t as life-altering as my conversion, it was a time to grow Jewishly. I stood up for myself as a Jew during OCS when too often the only choices in the mess hall were treif. I spoke up and at the next meal, had a whole poached salmon put in front of me!

My first tour was at Naval Air Station, Norfolk, VA where I was stationed for two years. I became very involved with the base chapel. Norfolk has one of very few permanent Jewish chapels. I became the vice-president of the congregation and a good friend of the chaplain – another HUC rabbi. The president of the congregation was a Lieutenant Commander who was instrumental in my getting orders to Intelligence School. But not before both he and the chaplain introduced me to a friend of theirs, a certain Ned Soltz in a neighboring community. We met on Thanksgiving 1974 and it will probably go down as one of the worst first meetings of all time. We saw each other again at a joint Purim celebration between Ned’s congregation and the chapel congregation. Again, we couldn’t stand each other!

I went off to Denver for five months of Intelligence School and came back to Washington, D.C. for my next tour. It was Thanksgiving and again, the same players repeated the same dinner get-togethers. We’re still trying to figure out what changed, but this time it clicked! We were set up by four couples — the Lieutenant Commander and his wife, the chaplain and his wife, another HUC Rabbi and his wife, and Ned’s parents. We met – for this second time – on Nov 22, 1975 and were engaged on Feb 22, 1976, and married on April 11. We had our 36th anniversary this year. My parents, grandmother, aunt, sister and brother-in-law were all there, and were welcomed into the family by Ned’s parents, as well as our friends and congregants. I had found where I belonged.

To fill in a few of the things that happened in the past 36 years, since Ned and I got married, I resigned my commission from the Navy, got an MBA in Accounting, worked at Citibank as a financial analyst, and our daughter, Sarah, now 29, was born. After becoming a mom, I left the work force and became a full-time mom and volunteer, spending many years’ worth of volunteer hours at Sarah’s schools and our shuls, always very involved with Sisterhood, and often working in the office. After my mother and sister died over 20 years ago, I grew even closer to my father, and was blessed to have a deep, loving relationship with him until he died 6 years ago.

I took one further step in the spring of 2006 when I had a Bat Mitzvah with seven other women in our Texas congregation. I’d never felt the need before to have a Bat Mitzvah, feeling that I’d taken the one big step already, but something drew me to these women. It was a wonderful, fulfilling experience and one that gave me an opportunity to make up for something I always felt a bit lacking. One of our group suggested that before our B’not Mitzvah, we all go to the mikveh. For me it was a bit more special, because I was finally able to have the real mikveh that I’d missed out on in 1971.

For over 41 years, I’ve lived as a Jew, feeling fully Jewish, as if I was born a Jew. It’s where I belong and where I call home. I hope that I’ve been successful as a rebbetzin. I’ve always tried to conduct myself in our congregations as I feel my mother would have. She was the consummate Marine Corps officer’s wife and I learned a great deal from her. I hope she understood how much I learned from her.

Where am I Jewishly, and how did I get here? Well, this is the story of how I got here, starting almost 42 years ago. But where is here? I’m still learning about Reconstructionism, but one thing I have internalized completely is the sense of community. This is my home, where I belong. I must say though that I desperately believe in God, and undoubtedly a personal God, for I still hear that knock on the door and still see that tree that wasn’t there yesterday. Those were my “Aha” moments, my life-altering religious experiences.

Thank you all for bestowing this Simchat Torah honor on me. I am truly humbled. Of all the congregations I’ve been in, M’vakshe Derekh is the ultimate in providing me the sense of com-munity I so need.

*
Rebbetzin Soltz has given her permission for San Diego Jewish World to reprint from her congregation’s bulletin  this article in memory of the late Rabbi Samuel Penner of the former Congregation Beth Tefilah of San Diego (a forerunner of today’s Ohr Shalom Synagogue)