I Needed to Come Home    

IN fourth grade, Genie Milgrom was brought to the priest in charge of her Catholic school. She’d asked too many questions, had challenged too many of the inconsistencies in her education, and the nuns felt she needed guidance. “You should pray for faith and enlightenment, or you will fall off the path of the righteous,” the priest told her.

Genie learned to keep her doubts private. If she was fascinated by the Jewish people she met, she didn’t share it with her Cuban-American family.

Even as an adult, married with two children, Genie still felt an intense connection to Judaism. She lived in Miami, in a Jewish, though not religious, area. As she began to explore this connection and learn everything she could about Judaism, she found herself at odds with her husband. Eventually, they divorced, and one of their agreements was that if she chose to take her fascination with Judaism further, she wouldn’t try to convert their children.

With renewed determination, Genie found a Reconstructionist synagogue and began to learn about what it meant to be a Jew. “Then came Rosh Hashanah,” Genie told Family First. “The speaker was great. And then we get to the meal, and it was shrimp.” She knew enough about Judaism to knew that shrimp was definitely not kosher.