These days I'm in a good space. Learning is going well, enjoying work, happy at home and in general. But it's taken many years to get here.
My family wasn't frum at all. It's still a mystery even to me where my pull towards yiddishkeit came from. Possibly cheder, but all I remember about that was learning to read Hebrew. Whatever the source, from a young age I felt that being religious was the right thing to do. We didn't do it, but we should. No one else from my family seemed to feel that way.
When I was studying for my degree my best friend phoned me up and invited me to Israel. Aish HaTorah were piloting their first
Jerusalem Fellowships from South Africa.
We thought we were getting a cheap trip to Israel, but had I known the outreach nature of the program beforehand I think I still would have gone. Like I said, there was always something inside me that said being being religious is the right way to live.
The program was perfectly suited for an ignoramus like me. I went to a public school with a fair percentage of Jewish students, and came out with a spectacular lack of Jewish knowledge, as is to be expected. They presented in a palatable way how pleasant and fulfilling it is to be frum, and I was eager to accept the message. One of the presentations was on Tznius and Shomer N'giah (cunningly set towards the end of the program, after they'd softened you up) and I absorbed it with a happy heart like all the rest of the lessons I was thirsting to learn.
I had made a girlfriend on the tour, and after that lecture we sort of danced around each other in a way I would have found strange a few weeks before. Back home I distinctly remember walking along the street one day and suddenly realising that 50% of all my thoughts and energies were now free to use as I wished. No more anxiety about 'does she like me?' or 'how do I look?' or 'where am I going to get money for a date' or a million other concerns. Quite liberating!
Continued...