As you go through the conversion process, you attend classes of all topics—how Jews deal with death, how Jews prepare for Shabbat, well, you get the idea…. Pretty easy to follow and simple enough to understand. It’s when I got into the classes about the actual prayers that things got a little more difficult for me. 

I grew up in a largely unreligious household where we rarely went to church. My father went into Alcoholics Anonymous when I was quite young, a tenet of which is the concept of sobriety through the belief in a higher power. The higher power could be whatever you wanted it to be. It wasn’t outlined or talked about. And we didn’t. Our family was a loud, talkative one, but not about G-d.

So when the concept of the Shema was brought up during the conversion classes, frankly, it made me a little uncomfortable. The words are pretty simple, “Shema Israel, Adonai Elohaynu, Adonia Echad.” Hear Israel, the Lord is our G-d, the Lord is One. Or, we can say it more simply (and we do) to our children, “G-d is everywhere and G-d is one.”  You know, for a nonbeliever, it’s a little creepy to think that someone or something is everywhere.

The Shema should be said in the morning and in the evening. So, now I have to say it TWICE? I didn’t do anything once a year, much less twice a day! You are also avowing twice a day your belief that 1), there IS a G-d, and 2), that he or she is not only everywhere, but one.

So, this became one of those prayers, like those recited during Yom Kippor, “we have lied, we have transgressed,” that I thought of periodically and just assumed that it didn’t matter whether or not I recited when I was supposed to. I mean, who was to know?

There’s never a time you feel the biggest fake until you face your children. My kids learned in preschool and at Tot Shabbat the proper way, words, and time to recite the Shema. I mean, with all the education going on, they laid it on thick. There was no getting around saying that prayer. Add a child’s absolutely pure belief in G-d and you are in for it. You’re saying that prayer.

And so I did. For the past six years or so, it’s been our nighttime routine as the last thing we do with our kids before the actual walking-out-of-the-room, lie-down, this-is-definitely-lights-out routine. Furthermore, the Shema has been a great answer for some of those car conversations where the question of “is there really a G-d?” comes up. The great answer of, “G-d is everywhere and is one,” kind of gets you out of made-up answers, right? From those words, we can then talk about G-d being in small details, in nature, in the whiskers of the kittens, in the night sky, etc.

And you know what?  I am beginning to believe that prayer. Reciting it at night with the kids may be the only truly Jewish thing I do that day. It makes me pause to think “maybe G-d is everywhere.”  Thankfully, it’s not a creepy feeling anymore, but one filled with love, comfort, and the idea that someone or something is maybe looking out for me.

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