http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/125143A Minister Finds Her Way to Judaism
by Sarah Morrison
(IsraelNN.com) It is said that the spirit of a Jew, a pintele yid, never dies. No matter how disconnected or how construed a Jew's path to Judaism is, his soul still feels a longing to return to Judaism. Tova Mordechai is no exception. She described her life story in a radio interview with Walter Bingham; click to listen to Part One and Part Two.
Born and raised as a devout Christian in England with no connection with the outside world, Tova had no intention of changing her life. She entered theological seminary at the age of 16 to begin her career as a minister, to give her life to the Christianity with which she was raised.
In her twenties, however, Tova began to feel something missing. Short, forbidden visits to a local synagogue brought her pintele yid to life, and an internal battle ensued: Was the way she had run her whole life the correct way, or was this new burning sensation a sign to follow the Jewish path?
All her life, Tova Mordechai knew that her mother was Jewish.
"My mother was Egyptian and my father was Protestant," Tova said. "My mother grew up and lived in a very Christian environment. Christians want nothing more than to convert Jews, and a missionary must have been constantly harassing my grandmother. She must have told her that if she found a Christian G-d, she would find inner peace."
“My grandmother converted," Tova said, "and she influenced my mother to do the same. My grandfather sat shiva [the traditional Jewish seven-day mourning period -ed.] for his wife and daughter when they were baptized into the Church.”
Although she knew her mother was born a Jew, Tova felt absolutely no connection to that heritage. The subject was never brought up and it seemed like a distant reality, something that was not relevant to her life.
"The only time my mother being Jewish was brought up was in the Church once a year," Tova said. "Groups of missionaries were brought into our church and they would stand up and be introduced. My mother was introduced as 'Sister Sally, The Jew,' and everyone would clap. That's how I knew that she was Jewish. The fact that she was Jewish had no weight in our house whatsoever."
By the age of 16, Tova decided that she wanted to dedicate her entire life to service in the Church. Her father saw her motivation and offered to send her to theological seminary in Nottingham, England, to begin her training as a minister. She eagerly accepted the offer and was sent off to study.
"The principal of the college believed that unless a person's spirit was broken, he could not be close to G-d," Tova said. The number one rule was to be obedient to everyone of a higher rank, no matter how humiliating the task. Tova recalled doing unbelievably humiliating things just because she was told to do them and had no choice.
"The principal frequently called for fasts. We would fast once a week, sometimes twice. It was always admirable to fast twice. We were deprived of sleep during these times. Once a year, he called upon us to fast for an entire week. When we were fed, we had to eat anything that was put in front of us. It didn't matter how moldy or burnt it was. This was to curtail the natural desire in a person to lust for food. My husband doesn't understand how I dealt with these conditions. He doesn't understand that I wanted to do these things because they were supposed to bring me close to G-d."
Her Jewish spirit never sparked during this time. She was perfectly content with her theological training until one day, when her sister, who also attended the college, passed Tova in the dining room.
"I asked what day was today, and she said it was Yom Kippur," Tova said. "I asked how she knew that, and she said that she had seen all the Jews going to synagogue. It turns out there was a synagogue just a five-minute walk from the seminary!"
All Tova could think about that day was that all the Jews were in synagogue and that she wasn't there. The sad feeling in her gut lingered all day. And after that, no matter how hard Tova prayed that those feelings would change, no matter how hard she tried to ignore them, they just kept coming back.
After several weeks, Tova paid her first visit to a synagogue on a Saturday morning. When she arrived, she sat down in the men's section. A man told her to leave. She left, extremely insulted, and fully understanding why her mother left Judaism for the Church in the first place.
Of course, at that point, she had no idea that men and women sat separately. "I thought it was rude to walk upstairs to the women's section while the service was going on," Tova explained about her Jewish faux pas. Tova returned to the church, content with Christianity, and was ordained as a minister before the age of 21.
Six months into her ordination, her Israeli uncle came to England to visit. The principal of the college warned her that he might offer her a ticket to Israel.
"I was so excited that he was coming to visit," Tova said. "My uncle was not religious, but he had a very strong Jewish identity. He knew that his father had sat shiva for his mother and his sister. But when he came and saw me in that church behind those walls, he asked what I was doing there.
As the principal had predicted, she said, “He then offered me a ticket to Israel, which I turned down. He offered me a place to live. He wanted me to lighten up and have fun. He wanted me to enjoy life. But I told my uncle that I could not come, that this was my life and I had given it to G-d. But after that visit, I decided to go to the synagogue again. I remembered to sit in the women's section that time," she said with a laugh. "I remember I came in at the part where the Rabbi was taking out the Torah scroll. My Jewish neshamaleh [little soul] woke up from its deep, deep stupor... Although I had no idea what the Rabbi was saying, and I had no idea what I was mumbling, I acknowledged that there was one G-d for the first time in my life. My soul awakened within in just because I was surrounded by Jews, near the Torah."
When Tova returned to the Church, she tried to convince herself that Judaism was an old religion with nothing to offer her. However, after only a few weeks, her Jewish spark became a glowing ember. The feeling was so strong that she returned to the synagogue again.
"This time when I went to synagogue, the Rabbi got up to speak," Tova said. "I never heard the Rabbi speak before. I became so engrossed with what he was saying that I didn't notice the time. I had to return to the Church. I was very late. I couldn't lie to the principal when he asked me why I was late. I told him that I had been to synagogue."
The principal's fury raged like an out of control forest fire. He said, "You are a Gentile. The Bible says you are a Gentile. Every morning when you wake up, tell yourself that you are a Gentile. Every night when you go to sleep, the first thought on your mind should be that you are a Gentile." He then banned Tova from ever going to the synagogue again and changed her name to Joy, so that the joy of Jesus would permeate her.
The fierce fight Tova put up against her pintele yid lasted for months afterward. Around Passover time, some missionaries came to the church with pamphlets they found about Passover.
"Chabad put out a packet on the complicated rules of Passover for that year, because the two days led into Shabbat," Tova said. "The packets were distributed around the church and were mocked. Everyone looked at them and said, 'Look at what the Jews are doing!' Everyone thought they were ridiculous. I chased down one of the missionaries and took her last packet. When my roommates were asleep, I took a flashlight under my covers and eagerly read the packet. I was highly disappointed by what I found. There was a poem about a goat and a declaration that I had no bread left. I didn't even know that Jews had matzoth on Passover, so why would I enjoy reading this pamphlet?"
Tova came up with an idea from reading this one pamphlet. "I figured that there must have been other pamphlets on other Jewish things. I wrote to this Rabbi and asked him for more pamphlets. He didn't answer me for four months. I had finally given up on it when a brown package arrived at the church for me. Miraculously, this mail was not opened. [All mail coming into the church was opened and screened before it was given to the recipients.] They even sent the package from the address of a church in Manchester! They had thought of everything. I opened the package and found so much information inside. I was elated."
Tova found ten minutes of private time to call the Rabbi who had sent her the material and finally agreed, after several phone conversations, to meet him in person. The rabbi offered her a place to stay with a family who was looking for a nanny. Finally, after several weeks of gathering up her courage, Tova Mordechai ran away from her theological seminary to discover what a Jewish life was really about.
"I knew that the family had seven kids," Tova said, "but I didn't know that they were all under the age of eight! The children were all angels and their parents were such sweethearts. I was used to food having such a negative connotation, but I came in and she offered me tea, coffee, something to eat… I couldn't believe it."
On Friday, the entire household was busy with Shabbat preparations.
"All day long, the woman was asking me if I wanted to take a shower," Tova said. "I felt rude bothering her. I decided that I would take a shower after Shabbat began, when she was less busy. (Bathing is prohibited on the Sabbath). So after I lit a candle - all her children wanted to help me with the blessing - I asked if I could take my shower. She said, 'I'm sorry, but you cannot bathe on the Sabbath.' I was so angry. I stormed up to my room. I was furious; I wanted to go back to the Church. I wanted to get far away from there. I ran up to my room, but the second I entered it, all the rage went away. There was an unexplainable peace in that room after the candles were lit. Everything was calm. Nothing else could have brought that peace but Shabbat."
After that incident, Tova made her way to Machon Alta in the northern Israeli city of Tzfat to further explore Judaism and deepen her commitment. While she was there, she met her husband and got married. However, she didn't tell her family that she got married or that she even had children.
"I wrote a postcard to my father, and wrote 'P.S. I'm married' on the bottom," Tova said. "Just as casually, he wrote back 'P.S. Congratulations' at the end of his postcard."
Today, Tova lives in Tzfat with her husband and her four children. She works for Machon Alta, the same school she went to 24 years earlier. She has been associated with Chabad for just as long.
In the end, Tova Mordechai dedicated her life to G-d. Although this method doesn't involve moldy bread and week-long fasts, she feels as satisfied as she ever did. And even though she had to work her way to where she is, all the effort was worth it. All her dreams came true, though completely differently than she had imagined when she was 16 years old. Her pintele yid is concentrated on serving G-d, but under a synagogue roof.
To learn more about Tova's story, read her book, "Playing with Fire," available online or at Jewish bookstores. To hear Tova's interview on "Walter's World", click here for Part One and here for Part Two.
For more on Judaism's response to Christian missionaries, click here.
Topic: A Minister Finds Her Way to Judaism (Read 2389 times)