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Kimberly Weston and her chatan, Joseph Baruch.
Road To Conversion:
One Woman's Story
AMY J. MEHLER
Staff Writer
K
imberly Weston gave
her black, Southern
Baptist parents plen-
ty of cause for alarm while
growing up.
She refused to be baptized
until she was 12 years old.
She would lob a lot of
disbelieving questions at
Christian ministers and
Sunday school teachers. She
thought communion was
weird.
Rabbi Louis Finkelman,
who oversaw Ms. Weston's
conversion to Judaism, says
those qualities make her the
best kind of Jew.
"Kimberly's questioning
nature and love of books and
knowledge are ideal in
Judaism," said Rabbi
Finkelman, who is director
of the B'nai B'rith Hillel
Foundation of Metropolitan
Detroit.
Ms. Weston, 31, who grew
up on the east side of
Detroit, converted to
Judaism in November 1989.
She is engaged to Joseph
Baruch, 51, of New York. He
is an Orthodox Jew who is
black. The couple plans to
marry in November.
Ms. Weston, who
graduates from Wayne State
University in August with a
master's degree in library
science, said her parents and
family don't fully under-
stand her decision, but are
very supportive.
"My dad is a religious
man, but he doesn't believe
too much in organized re-
ligion," Ms. Weston said.
"My parents always en-
couraged me to read a lot
and question. Consequently,
I spent a lot of time going to
church trying to figure it
out.
"But the whole idea of a
three-part God was confus-
ing to me. I used to ask min-
isters how it wasn't like
idolatry. I also couldn't
understand how the Old and
New Testaments didn't con-
tradict each other. My mom
used to complain that I em-
barrassed the hell out of
her."
Rabbi Finkelman said that
whenever he's approached
by someone who wants to
convert to Judaism, he pulls
out his large volume of
Maimonides' Mishnah
Torah.
"But first I ask if he or she
is aware that a righteous
gentile has a place in the
world to come," Rabbi
Finkelman said. "Then I'll
begin to translate the basic
laws of conversion."
According to Maimonides,
who bases his codification on
the Talmud, the three con-
cepts gentiles must accept
before a bet din, a court of
three rabbis, will acknowl-
edge their conversion are:
the oneness of God, the bin-
ding nature of mitzvot (com-
mandments), and the belief
in reward and punishment.
"It's traditional to try and
dissuade a non-Jew from
converting to Judaism,"
Rabbi Finkelman said. "For
one, it's forever irrevocable,
even if the person wishes to
have it nullified. Second, if a
person converts to Orthodox
Judaism and commits to liv-
ing an observant life and
later decides not to, then
they've lost rather than
gained from the process."
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THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
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