‘If you finish your conversion to Judaism, are you prepared to deal with anti-Semitism?”

This was the question posed to me by a rabbi during my second meeting with the Rabbinical Court of Massachusetts, which was considering me as a candidate for conversion to Judaism.

The gravity of the question was not lost on me, especially as it came from a man whose early years were spent in a Nazi concentration camp, and who now had the authority to make others—and their descendants—vulnerable to evil by accepting them into the Jewish tribe.

“There is a man sitting in federal prison right now who threatened to kill me because he thought I was Jewish,” I answered. When I was just one year out of college and working as a journalist for the Daily Wire in Los Angeles, I had my first real scare from a truly disturbed person who said he wanted to rape and kill me because he believed I was a Jew. Although he was eventually sent to prison, I learned how dangerous it could be as a semipublic figure with a great love for Judaism—and I wasn’t even a Jew yet.

Since I converted to Judaism in April 2023, the months have been packed with the joy of finally joining the Jewish people and falling in love with my now-husband, contrasted with the tragedy of October 7 and the work I’ve done documenting the massacre sites and anti-Israel protests in its aftermath. Though this is not how I expected my first year as part of Am Yisrael to be, I was oddly well equipped and prepared to encounter the anti-Semitism visible in America’s cities. In fact, anti-Semitism deserves partial credit for leading me to God, His Torah, His land, and His people.

During college, I also encountered hateful trolls who harassed me and questioned whether I was Jewish because of my pointy nose, despite having Irish, English, and French lineage. When I began traveling to Israel on both secular and Christian group trips, I received Jew-hating messages and tweets, complete with images of Hitler and concentration camps. However, things escalated significantly when I started working for Ben Shapiro at the Daily Wire. A well-known white supremacist even labeled me “Ben’s philosemitic flying monkey.”

It was as though the anti-Semites had sensed something Jewish about me, but they were confused by my identity—and so was I. The truth is, I was just beginning my journey to understand who I was and my relationship with God. The more anti-Semitic hate mail filled my inbox, the more I became interested in learning about what drove these correspondents to attack Jewish people, and me.

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My first experience with Jew-hatred came in 2014. I was fresh out of high school, and my first Jewish friend, who was in Israel, called me to report that when leaving a bar he had received a gash on his arm after being attacked because he was a Jew. At the time, I didn’t believe him. I remember telling him Nazis don’t exist anymore and that he must have been making an excuse for trouble he had stirred up. A few weeks later, three teenage boys trying to hitchhike in Israel were kidnapped and brutally murdered by terrorists. That incident ignited Operation Protective Edge, the 2014 war with Gaza, and my study of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.

That was also my freshman year at Mount Holyoke, and I attended a speech by Mosab Hasson Yousef at nearby Amherst College. Yousef, a pro-Israel Palestinian who is the son of one of the co-founders of Hamas, was shouted down by an attendee during his speech. Though this disturbance was minuscule compared with what has happened over the past years, I realized how oblivious I had been to the hatred held by academics and college students toward a tiny country thousands of miles away.

At the start of my sophomore year, I enrolled in a class on the Middle East and was assigned readings about the “Israeli Lobby” and the alleged cruelty of the Israelis. As a young student just beginning to engage with the conservative movement and hearing professors in other classes discuss how people like me were bigoted, I had developed enough distance that I did not simply accept the validity of course materials. To supplement my education, I signed up for a bipartisan, non-Jewish trip to Israel in the summer of 2016 with young Republicans and Democrats from across the United States. It would be the first time I had ever left the country, and I was terribly nervous. As a poor kid from a broken home supporting myself in college, I was one of the first in my family to see the world beyond our struggling Western Massachusetts community.

When I was in Jerusalem, at the Kotel for the first time, right before Shabbat, watching people singing and dancing with pure joy, something in me awakened. A Christian girl on my trip asked me, “Do they do this every year?” I told her Shabbat is a weekly holiday and the celebration begins every Friday night. The energy was infectious. I remember looking at a woman praying, eyes glued to a book and gently rocking. I wanted to know how to pray like that, with so much focus and connection. The same Christian girl told me years later that she had noted in her diary how that night I had confided in her that I would convert to Judaism one day.

Considering my upbringing, I’m not surprised that I was drawn to the light of Judaism. I was raised by a single mother in a chaotic home. There was no Bible in the house, no Sunday service, and no spiritual direction. I never learned to pray, we never spoke about God, and the only talk about religion centered on my mother’s disdain for the Catholic Church. She had attended Catholic school and felt very judged when she, unmarried, became pregnant with my older sister at 19. My mother said she wanted us to decide on religion for ourselves and preferred to stay out of it. I can now see how that seemed like a reasonable and open-minded position for her to take. But in reality, it left three children with no foundation or understanding of God, and no clue on how to seek out that information.

In that situation, whom do you trust with the most fundamental questions of life? Are any institutions to be trusted? What is your purpose? Who is God? Now, I did believe in God, but I couldn’t formulate what that quite meant. I also had no knowledge of the stories in the Bible. Christmas was for Santa, Easter was for chocolate, and there was not much more to consider beyond that.

The only exposure I did have to religion was through my maternal grandmother, who become a Jehovah’s Witness when my mother was a teenager. I was always impressed by her ability to cite parts of the Hebrew Bible faster than many religious scholars. However, as a young child, I resented her religion because it required her to abstain from all our family festivities, in accordance with her faith’s prohibition against joining holiday and birthday celebrations.¹

After my first trip to Israel, I arranged to study abroad at the University of Haifa in the spring of 2017. My goal was to continue studying Arabic and take a break from the post-2016 American election chaos. My plan was to explore Christianity and Judaism during my time in Haifa. At the time, I had not ruled out Christianity as a potential religious path. It worked out that I roomed with a Christian American and three Bedouin girls. It was the time of my life.

I attended a Christian-Arab church and found myself observing as an outsider rather than connecting spiritually. I visited the synagogue at Elijah’s Cave and the beautiful church above it. On Palm Sunday, I marched into Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives, singing, and later prayed at the Kotel. I celebrated Easter while also learning about Pesach. I went Bible-shopping with my Christian friends, asking them theological questions, and also spent Shabbat with my new Orthodox Jewish friends. I tried my best to learn about both faiths, but only one truly resonated with me. However, I still wasn’t serious about embracing all 613 mitzvot. That would come years later.

Eager to return, I traveled to Israel many more times with various Christian and Zionist organizations. When I moved to Los Angeles after college, I chose to live within walking distance of an Orthodox synagogue, and I learned with an Orthodox rabbi whose wife and children inspired me by their love for learning and God. I was making sure that I had the tools I needed in case I decided to commit myself fully. I even started taking on mitzvot, like lighting Shabbat candles and saying morning blessings, but at that time still had not embarked on a formal conversion process.

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Los Angeles is where my troubles with the mentally ill anti-Semite began. One weeknight, I received an email with the subject line “I think you might be about to get killed because you serve the devil.” The email linked to his Instagram page, where I discovered dozens of posts featuring pictures of me with threats to rape and kill me. The obsession was clear: There were years-old pictures of me, a screenshot of my image as his phone background, and several photos of him with firearms and threatening captions (which I later found out were fake). He also posted an image of himself holding a faux German Luger—the pistol used by German soldiers in World War II—with the caption declaring “It’s time to start bombing synagogues.” I found emails I had ignored from him where he called me his “future sex slave” and said he would forcibly impregnate me.

“Do you think you might be in danger? I certainly do,” read one of his emails.

I called the police. However, he wasn’t arrested until weeks later when I called to tell them he was now threatening Donald Trump, in addition to Ben Shapiro, Jared Kushner, and me. The Department of Justice withheld my and Shapiro’s names in a report about the case, classifying us as victims of a hate crime. The DOJ stated that the man had been arrested after attempting to purchase a firearm, having already bought holsters, bulletproof vests, and ammunition.

While his defense was that he was mentally ill and not responsible for the posts, Chief U.S. District Judge Ricardo S. Martinez asserted, “Mental illness may explain the intensity, but it does not excuse the actions that he took or the threats that he made instilling fear in his victims.” The man was sentenced to five years in prison. (Strangely enough, minutes after leaving the meeting where I had been asked about my preparedness to be subjected to anti-Semitism, I received an email informing me he was being released early, with only three years served.)

I was shaken. I’d received death threats before, but I never took them seriously from anonymous trolls on X. This guy was different. He made his face, name, and hatred clear. I took a break from the news industry and enrolled in a master’s program. At the same time, I was preparing myself to find a sponsor rabbi to begin my conversion to Judaism. I met with a rabbi in Los Angeles who was open to working with me.

However, things changed when I met a man whom I truly believed I was going to marry. He wasn’t Jewish, but I convinced myself he was perfect for me. After two years, we split over differences in politics, religion, and life goals. During that relationship, I put my desire to convert on the back burner, convinced that God had sent me someone so perfect that I did not need Judaism to feel complete. He was Catholic, and I respected his faith, attended Mass with him, and met with priests to learn. Without quite knowing why, I largely refrained from eating pork and shellfish, often lit Shabbat candles, and even hosted large Friday-night meals—although I didn’t always tell my guests they were attending my pseudo-Shabbat. When someone asked about my religion, I would say I believed in Judaism but wasn’t Jewish.

I moved with him to Boston so he could attend a master’s program, and just a few months later, the relationship fell apart. I found myself in an unfamiliar city, depressed and without any support system to lean on. In a moment of clarity, in the fall of 2021, I emailed the Beit Din, the Jewish religious court that oversees conversions, and asked for more information.

I was at one of the lowest points of my life, but I still felt a sense of freedom and knew that God paves paths for us sometimes that need to be difficult to make us appreciate the destination. I had been happy in that doomed relationship, for the most part, but I did not feel complete without Judaism.

I remember arriving at a shul, the same one where I would eventually marry my husband, and meeting with the rabbi to ask him to be my sponsor. He heard me out and showed me around the shul while he contemplated taking my case on. He told me to come the following Shabbat morning. I had never been to Shabbat services and was terrified. I had taken one year of modern Hebrew classes in college, but had no idea what I was doing. Fortunately, a woman quickly took it upon herself to teach me the order of the service, when to sit and when to stand, and the like. I was so eager to daven that I regularly listened to recordings of prayers and songs on YouTube on repeat for practice; because of this I learned rather quickly. I solicited lists of books to read and began to fill out the lengthy application with the Beit Din. I took on mitzvot slowly and said farewell to treif food. (I miss you, Korean BBQ!) Still, I didn’t have many friends my age and felt alone on this journey.

Months later, that all changed when I was invited to a 2022 New Year’s Eve party by a friend who was visiting his family in Boston during winter break. I didn’t know anyone in the room at the time, but the three most important people in my life were at that party: my future roommate of two years, my best friend and teacher, and my husband.

Marika Feuerstein-Karas was the woman who soon became my best friend. She was recovering from the recent loss of her famous grandfather, Aaron Feuerstein, nicknamed “the mensch who saved Christmas” for continuing to pay his workers after his large textile factory burned down in 1995. We were both recovering from sorrow and found comfort in each other’s company.

When she learned that I was going to the shul her family founded and as a non-Jew besides, Marika said she felt guilty for taking many years off of religious observance. She began to keep Shabbat again and accompany me to synagogue every week. She was always a community organizer, but she began to step up her hosting and utilized her talent for sharing inspiring Torah lessons with large groups of nonobservant Jews. I had a front seat to her knowledge, and, looking back, I don’t think my conversion process would’ve happened as smoothly or quickly as it did without her influence.

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The first of many meetings with the Beit Din came just a few months after I submitted my application. I’ve spoken to crowds of thousands of people and been on television many times with little fear, but nothing made me more flustered than sitting in a little room at a table across from three or four rabbis grilling me on my knowledge and personal beliefs.

At these meetings, the rabbis want to make sure that you’re serious. It’s a big deal to welcome a new Jew into the tribe. Your soul, your neshama, becomes responsible for upholding the 613 mitzvot. As a woman, you become responsible for creating new Jewish lives.

They ask you questions about halacha and Torah, about your family history, and most of all: Why in the world would you want to accept so many laws into your daily life? You have to make the case that not only are you prepared to join the tribe, but that you will be a dedicated, observant Jew.

One of the first knowledge-testing questions they asked me was to name the patriarchs.

“Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, Leah,” I instantly responded.

“Are you sure?” a rabbi asked me several times.

I felt sure, and I was obviously too confident in my learning.

“So you’re a feminist,” the rabbi joked. I quickly realized my error.

The next question was: “What did the burning bush say to Moses?”

I was so nervous from the previous blunder that my brain went blank. They answered it for me. Then they asked me why Moses had to remove his shoes for holy ground and why we do not remove our shoes in synagogue.

I then regained some confidence and realized they were enjoying this trivia game. Out of nervousness, I made a joke, saying perhaps we needed a burning bush in our synagogue. They laughed, and my wall fell; I felt more comfortable.

They told me I did well, assigned me several books to read and asked me to return in a few months.

During the conversion process, I switched jobs from that of digital director at Nikki Haley’s nonprofit, Stand for America, to an editor of the Jewish News Syndicate. I was now covering anti-Semitism and Israel during the day and learning about Judaism at night. Torah and the Jewish community were always on my mind, and I was grateful.

The subsequent meetings involved them monitoring my learning, ensuring I was making an effort to be part of the community, with one rabbi insisting I go to seminary.

Now when I heard they wanted me, a 26-year-old with a master’s degree, to leave my full-time job to move to Israel for months and learn in a religious school, I thought they were nuts, and I was frustrated. How was I supposed to pay my bills? What about my apartment and my dogs? Most of all: What about my career? I pushed back but eventually gave in.

I arrived at a haredi seminary in Har Nof in the fall of 2022, studying from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. and working my full-time job from then until midnight. I was shocked by the haredi community and honestly felt uncomfortable and resentful in the first week. People initially felt cold, and the amount of religious observance and the modesty (sniut) requirements were unlike anything I had ever encountered before. I recorded audio diaries each day and sent them to my close friends. Listening to these recordings now, I find my evolution over my time there striking.

On Day One, I complained about the isolated feeling of the community on the mountain and the inflexible learning, but by Day Nine, I had almost entirely bought in. I appreciated the seriousness of the community’s dedication to Torah and the humility of my fellow students. I was drinking from a firehose and while you would think I was exhausted, I was more alive and on fire than ever.

Seminary is truly an immersive experience where you are surrounded by people of a similar age who take God and His Torah seriously. I had never encountered such a supportive and rich environment before. I quickly learned that such places are the secret to how Judaism has lived on and inspired. It is no wonder that so many converts and baal teshuvas visit seminaries and yeshivas on short programs and end up staying for years. I was grateful to the rabbis who insisted I attend.

I went to the Kotel on the anniversary of my breakup and thanked God for guiding me to a new existence where I could feel more like myself every day. I recalled my first visit to the Kotel when I had a longing to daven like the pious women there. Now here I was, six years later, with a siddur I could read with ease, davening to Hashem.

When it was time to leave, I traveled back to Boston and told the Beit Din of my experience. A few days later, I missed it so much that I decided to go back to continue learning and to celebrate Hanukkah in Jerusalem. I couldn’t get it out of my mind that I was sitting in Jerusalem and learning Torah—something that seems so simple but was the dream of so many Jews for thousands of years. Being a non-Jew with this privilege wasn’t lost on me.

I kept my conversion mostly secret to people beyond my friend group or community. I feared outsiders, especially those who had sent me hate mail for years, intruding into my personal life, since the process was sensitive and ongoing.

Though my conversion was relatively smooth, it was not without its struggles. The process is purposely vague, and one never knows when exactly it will conclude. Each time I attended a Beit Din meeting, I was overly confident, convinced it would be my last, only to be deeply disappointed when it was not. I arrived at each meeting armed with lists of families I ate by for Shabbat, every book I read, and the key dates when I had hit a new milestone. As a controlling type A, I was frustrated when the rabbis easily found gaps in my knowledge and sent me off with more assignments.

Then, at a meeting the day after Purim, I was told it was time. I couldn’t believe it. I cried and began to question whether I was worthy. That’s how I knew I was ready. No one should convert to Judaism without feeling the profound weight of responsibilities that will affect your life and soul.

I love observing the mitzvot, no matter how challenging some are to adopt at first. I love going to shul and classes. I love talking about Hashem and debating halacha with friends and overwhelming nearly every rabbi I know with unique and complicated questions. Being told I could now do all of these things as a Jew filled me with an indescribable joy.

My mikvah date—the plunge into the ritual bath that marks the moment of conversion—was one of the happiest yet most intimidating days of my life. I was questioned one last time, then sent off to the mikvah. I immersed myself and recited the blessing that completed my transformation into Devorah Rut.

I picked the name Devorah Rut, inspired by both of those heroines’ stories and the lessons they convey—Devorah’s strength and yearning to stand up for the Jewish people, and Rut’s ability to think for herself and accept Torah into her life.

When I exited the room, I was greeted by my friends and the rabbis, who all congratulated me and reminded me of the obligations I just accepted. I fondly remember not wanting to shower the next day because I didn’t want to wash the mikvah water off. That night one of the families I am very close to threw a party that brought so many diverse Jews to celebrate: Modern Orthodox, Haredi, Sefardi, Ashkenazi, observant, nonobservant. It made me realize how special the small Boston community is where Jews of all backgrounds support each other.

I decided to announce my conversion publicly online. It was better to get it out there and deal with the hatred right away rather than pretending it didn’t happen. Besides, I was proud of what I accomplished. But I was well aware that my joy from Judaism and Jewish life are not far removed from the preoccupation with anti-Semitism that comes from both political sides of the spectrum. Immediately the trolls started beating the drums. The commentary included contradictory messages calling me a dumb Jew or telling me I’d never be accepted. Meanwhile, the Jewish community welcomed me with open arms. I connected with many new people, all curious as to why in the world I would willingly adopt their religious ways.

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Shortly after my conversion, I went on one date with someone else and then quickly fell for Isaac—my now-husband—who had been in my friend group but dating someone else for most of the time I knew him.

When Isaac and I got engaged, I posted a photo of him, down on one knee, proposing to me on a bridge. An anonymous person quickly photoshopped Isaac’s body into a swastika and tweeted it at me. I initially found it hilarious that someone had taken time out of his day to edit my new fiancé in an attempt to bring me down from the joyous occasion. I sent it to him thinking it was funny.

Isaac was sitting in a class at his master’s program and responded by telling me to give him a heads-up next time before sending him such offensive content. He had never encountered anti-Semitism so directly or personally. Here I was, only a few months a Jew, but had had years of experience of such hatred.

Isaac grew up Reform with no outward signs that he was Jewish to strangers. He danced in the Boston Ballet for 15 years and completed his degree online, insulated from the anti-Israel protests on college campuses, and never encountered the dark corners of the Internet where Jew-hating trolls thrive. I believe that many young American Jews were similarly shielded from personally witnessing anti-Semitism until the October 7 attack and its aftermath.

At the peak of our happiness after our engagement, shortly before Simchat Torah, Isaac and I found ourselves attending anti-Israel protests and documenting them for my day job as a reporter just days later. We saw people across the river in Cambridge calling Jews pigs, murderers, and genocidal maniacs. Isaac and many others in my Jewish community couldn’t believe what they were seeing. I found people who had been Jews their entire lives asking me for advice about how to deal with anti-Semitic encounters, though I was only six months a Jew.

The events of October 7 reverberated in the entire American Jewish world and woke up a lot of people. A neighbor’s Black Lives Matter lawn sign was taken down and replaced by a Stand With Israel sign. Friends regularly asked me whether it was safe to go to pro-Israel protests and Jewish concerts because of counter-protesters. Just days after covering the fallout in America, I had had enough and knew I needed to go to Israel. I quit my job with Fox News, rejoined the Daily Wire, and went straight to the Gaza border. It was my third war zone after visiting areas near ISIS holdouts in Iraq and making a documentary in Ukraine when their war began, but this time it felt more personal.

I was shocked by what I saw and by the smell of dead bodies. I saw bloody homes, tormented survivors, and the Nova site before its debris was cleaned up. I remember standing on the flat field that had hosted a party with attendees my age and questioning where I would run if I were in their shoes. I was on the border for nearly two weeks watching Israel’s bombing of Gaza, speaking to survivors, and attending funerals of the fallen.

When the Beit Din had asked me if I was prepared to deal with anti-Semitism, I thought only of the trolls I was used to on the Internet and the occasional crazy person on the street. I did not think there would be another massacre of Jews on such a large scale.

I returned to America and spent the first six months of 2024 documenting the hatred ensuing on college campuses. I got my start in the media covering the hatred the left spewed at conservatives on campus, which nonconservative politicians largely ignored and administrators enabled. Their lack of action paved the way to a reality in which Jewish and Israeli students can’t walk to a class without a bunch of terrorist-supporting students calling them genocide enablers from their encampments.

Though I am a full-fledged Jew, I find it odd to call myself that sometimes. I feel that I am often stuck on a learning curve constantly picking up new terminology and learning basics that even some of the most secular Jews don’t think twice about. My wedding was one of the first Jewish weddings I had ever been to. I still have never paid a Shiva call. And my journey into learning how to raise Jewish children will begin only in the next few years—b’ezrat Hashem. Although the knowledge gap can sometimes be unsettling, the openness of the Jewish community to learning with—and not teaching at—is comforting.

While I am sharing my story now, as an only one-year-old Jew, my journey is far from over and I look forward to adding many more chapters soon. Many people joke that I picked an extraordinary year to join the Jewish people. But I didn’t pick it. Hashem did.

^{1 My grandmother’s absence sparked fights in our family over our own holiday traditions, but it helped me in that it paved the way for me to refuse politely to attend Christmas dinner and other celebrations, although it’s still somewhat of a point of tension. Fortunately, this has been the only major conflict in my family regarding my life decision. Still, every Thanksgiving, I miss my grandmother and reflect on how grateful I am that she was able to make my own conversion a bit more tolerable.}