To change, to convert? Why bother?
For a devotee or lover, the being, worshipped or loved, will always be the only one for her or him.
Early on I saw the repression and idolatry of Stalinism, and when it cracked, I was open to religion again.
I didn't want to be on the losing side. I was fed up with Jewish weakness, timidity and fear. I didn't want any more Jewish sentimentality and Jewish suffering. I was sickened by our sad songs.
At religious instruction classes, I encountered The Pilgrims Progress by John Bunyan, and the sincerity of the traveller in that book was overwhelming.
Discrimination against Jews can be read in Thomas Aquinas, and insults against Jews in Martin Luther.
An aged rabbi, crazed with liberalism, once said to me, We Jews are just ordinary human beings. Only a bit more so!
The Christian use of religion as a personal love affair both shocked me, and attracted me.
I was not allowed a physical lover. Falling in love with Love was the best I could get.
I recovered my infant Judaism, but in a reformist version.
Praying privately in churches, I began to discover that heaven was my true home and also that it was here and now, woven into this life.
During the Second World War, evacuated to non-Jewish households, I encountered Christianity at home and in school.
This Christian poison hasn't stopped yet.
Pious XII was too neutral to mention the gas chambers; decent people like my own family were turned into devils by crude Christianity.
I still go to a Christian priory for retreats.
Because of my Marxism, I was not into myths or miracles, whether it was the virgin birth, the physical resurrection or casting out demons from an epileptic.
It's more fun to watch without joining in.
It was admitted by the early rabbis that the sectarians could be as full of good works as eggs were full of meat.
