Stories of Return

The fact that I belonged to two cultures and religions made me feel like something inside me was irreconcilable and wrong. This engendered a kind of existential shame. I felt like a driven leaf, without roots or branches . . .

The story of the rebellious child has actually happened. Don’t believe me? Just ask my parents...

It is hard work to reconcile—in one’s own mind and heart—belief in an omnipotent Creator with all of the information one acquires from the secular fields of wisdom. It is even more challenging to communicate that fusion to others—friends, family, colleagues—to show people that one can be both a thinking person and a religious person...

Encountering my old friend, I saw that it wasn’t too late, that someone else could leave religious life and survive, even appear to thrive. So a new question arose in my mind: What is keeping me here?

I think the solution to elevating life lies in a box of raisins. It lies in being fully present and noticing the tiny nuances that take place in every bite of our lives . . .

I have written before about not judging others for doing more or less than me. The words may have sounded good at the time, but now I realize that I hadn’t really internalized them...

I’m rediscovering every day that each person has his or her own journey and pace. The key, I think, is not to judge others, and to be an example of goodness...

Here it came. The controversial cliché I’d been hearing so often. Flashy and scandalous, there was only one word that could end a sentence like that. A word I loathe. A word that makes me cringe and brings my blood to its boiling point. The B Word. “Brainwashed?” I asked. “Well, yes,” she conceded. “They think you’ve been brainwashed.”

When I hear the word "religion," I instinctively cringe. My stomach turns. My hands become clammy. My throat dry. On occasion, I have been known to break out in hives. This tends to confuse people who know me as a Torah observant Jewish woman...

I should have seen it coming when he wouldn’t drive to synagogue with us anymore, or eat at our favorite non-kosher restaurants. One minute, he was just our baseball-cap-sporting patriarch, watching videos with us on Saturday afternoon while we munched on gummy candy. The next minute, he was a bearded, kippah-wearing, Torah-quoting stranger…

I lost consciousness of My Self. I felt myself being turned around and around in the current. I did not stand my ground, but rather I had no choice but to let go. It sounds frightening and disorienting, but it wasn't. I had lost My Self, and in that moment, my Soul stepped in as so totally whole and complete where My Self had stood...

Even before I was born, I was being groomed for stardom. The name chosen for me was Kelly Dianne Scott. Not only did it have the distinct advantage of being as non-Jewish as possible, it was carefully structured to look symmetrical up on the marquee...

Like many in my generation, I went looking for truth in Buddhism, meditation, Tarot cards, and "mind-expanding" drugs. What I found left me adrift and afraid, anchored only in cynicism, an Italian boyfriend, and far too much wine...

My journey has taken me from my grandfather's primitive Baptist Church in Arkansas, to an ashram in the Catskills, and finally to Orthodox Judaism...

I was demanding a point blank answer to my question. "Please listen to exactly what I am asking. I just want to know – what’s my bottom line here? That’s all I care about."

Genius that she is, my mom didn't try to force me. She knew better than to give a teenager something to rebel against. We had an agreement; in the house we would keep kosher, out of the house I could do what I wanted...

Like many men and women of my generation, I was caught up in proving myself. One successful academic publication begot more. A teaching award necessitated that I earn the next higher honor...

Not only was I passionate about performance and creative endeavors in general, but, as I got older, I also began to delight in the recognition that it promised...