When Torah entered Brooke Foster's life, its vibrance spilled onto her canvas
B
rooke Foster was a sophomore at Arizona State University studying for an art degree when she was stopped by a woman handing out pamphlets for Jewish Arizonans on Campus (JAC), a kiruv organization.
“Are you Jewish?” the woman asked.
“I’m half Jewish,” Brooke replied.
The woman smiled and probed further. “Which half?”
Though Brooke was raised by a Jewish mother, she knew almost nothing about Judaism. “The most Jewish education I received was a conversation here or there about the Holocaust,” Brooke shares. “When my mother was pregnant with me, she and my father, a Christian, went to a pastor and said, ‘What should we do with our daughter? How should we raise her?’ The pastor replied, ‘The Jews will think she’s Jewish. Send her to temple.’ But for whatever reason, they decided not to. So I grew up in church instead.”
Every Sunday, Brooke went to services at a Presbyterian church in Irvine, California. She was also sent to the church’s youth group on Wednesdays, which included social events and Bible study. “Around the age of 16, I hit a wall with church,” Brooke says. “I started asking questions about what we were learning, but no one would answer me.” When, for instance, she asked her teacher a question about the contradictions in the accounts of their savior’s birth, she was kicked out of class.
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