Journey To Judaism

When she isn't reading scripts, Brat Pack actress now reads Scripture.

NAOMI PFEFFERMAN
Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles

I

want to be the first Jewish country singer," Mare
Winningham says.
"Actually, Kinky Friedman was the first. But I
want to be the next."
It's the kind of easy banter the actress-singer proffers
between nightclub sets of her country-tinged folk
music. But the setting on this Thursday afternoon is
the chapel at the University of Judaism (UJ), where
Winningham sits at an upright piano after completing
her three-hour Hebrew class.
In her pure, open voice, she launches into "Convert
Jig," a country-ish ditty she wrote before her conver-
sion last year to honor her "Introduction to Judaism"
teacher.
"He has organized the notes for life and given me the
tools to turn my tiny insignificance into something
big," she croons, as her eyes crinkle into a smile. "I will
be a Jew like all of you ... and never eat a pig."
If the levity is unexpected, the actress thinks she is,
too.
"Look, my last name is Winningham, and that in
itself is funny," she says. "I joke sometimes that I'll
open Winningham's Kosher Bakery' and throw every-
one for a loop."

Mare Winningham appears as a Catholic single mom
in the upcoming CBS series "Clubhouse."

Indeed, the 45-year-old actress is better known for
the decidedly American (read: non-Jewish) roles she's
portrayed in 70 films and TV movies than, say, for the
challah she bakes on Friday afternoons.
She won a 1980 Emmy for:playing a farmer's daugh-
ter in Amber Waves; received a 1996 Oscar nomination
for her role as a country music star in Georgia; and
starred as Kevin Costner's common-law wife in Wyatt
Eaip.
Winningham will also appear as a Catholic single
mom in the upcoming CBS series Clubhouse, premier-
ing Sept. 26, and a stalwart prairie resident in the
Hallmark TV movie The Magic of Ordinary Days,
which will air on CBS in late 2004 or early 2005.
(She's perhaps best known as the virginal Wendy from
the Brat Pack flick St. Elmo's Fire.)
As she leaves the piano to munch some kosher
almonds, she says she was happy to be back at the UJ
after the four-week Magic shoot near Calgary Canada.
"We were in the middle of nowhere, so I knew I was
going to miss Shavuot," she says, ruefully.
Shavuot, which celebrates converts, is Winningham's
favorite holiday, because it's the first she observed after
converting,in March 2003. For that Shavuot, she
stayed up all night studying at Temple Beth Am in
L.A.; in Calgary, she improvised by studying Jewish
books such as The Midrash Says, a five-volume set she's
vowed to complete this year.
Also in her suitcase was her trusty Shabbat travel kit,
which includes candlesticks, a prayer book, a
Havdalah candle and spice box.
"I've been known to light Shabbat candles in a
Honeywagon trailer," she says of her experience on
various sets.
Her observance has been "a real conversation
starter," especially among fellow Jews. Larry Miller, her
co-star from CBS's short-lived Brotherhood of Poland,
NH, recalls his surprise upon learning that
Winningham rushed home to bake challah one Friday
afternoon. "It was like having Grace Kelly say, 'By the
way, what time is Minchah?'" he says, referring to
afternoon prayers.
Winningham wouldn't forget the time.
"She takes her Jewish studies very seriously," Beth
Am's Rabbi Perry Netter says. "It's part of her incredi-
ble desire to be part of the Jewish world, not for any
other motive than she feels so deeply and passionately
Jewish."
The actress traces her spiritual journey to her
Catholic childhood in Granada Hills, Calif. Her great-
uncle "Father Dave" Maloney was bishop of Wichita,
Kan.; her devout mother, Marilyn, sent Mare and her
four siblings to catechism at the cathedral across the
street.
"My mom influenced me greatly with her beautiful
devotion to her faith," Winningham says.
But that came later. By age 14, Mare says, she had
developed problems with religion in general and "the
idea of someone dying for your sins.

"

A 12th-grade comparative religion course fueled her
budding agnosticism; after graduating from
Chatsworth High — where an agent discovered her in
a production of The Sound of Music — Winningham
began "a resolutely secular existence."
In 1982, she married her now ex-husband in a non-
denominational ceremony; she raised their five children
(today ages 15-22) in a household where holidays were
celebrated in an irreligious, if flamboyant fashion.
"I cooked for days," she says about Christmases past.
It wasn't until her children were nearly grown that
Winningham found herself reading works by Jung,
Joseph Campbell and others in an attempt to sort out
nagging religious and psychological questions. In the
summer of 2001, she visited a "creation of the world"
exhibit at a science museum and made an announce-
ment to herself: "I don't think I believe in God."
"But that night, I had the most remarkable dream,
which told me, `If you're going to reject something, at
least find out what it is you are rejecting," she says.
When a friend told her about the UJ's Introduction
to Judaism class, Winningham thought, "OK, I'll begin
by studying the Jews, since they started the one-God
thing."
While she intended to approach the class from a his-
torical, intellectual perspective, the epiphanies began
the day she stepped into Rabbi Neal Weinberg's UJ
class in November 2001.
"There I was, struggling with God, and one of the
first things he said was, 'Israel means struggle with
God," she says.
"When Mare started, she seemed to be checking
Judaism out," Weinberg recalls. "But before long, she
enthusiastically embraced the values of Judaism and
Jewish family life."
The actress says she began celebrating Shabbat and
fell in love with an observance that included "ritualiz-
ing, literally, the breaking of bread. Shabbat fed me lit-
erally and figuratively, and I found myself finding my
way to God through this very earthly endeavor of feed-
ing my family."
Although her children are not Jewish, they helped
her rate brisket recipes, participated in Torah discus-
sions and invited their Jewish friends to her Shabbat
table.
Winningham's attraction to Judaism deepened as she
read the Bible: "Everything one needs to know about
behavior here on Earth is manifest in these stories," she
says. 'Anything one could find confusing or morally
challenging is answerable. When the most important
thing about a religion is how you behave here, and not
about what happens after you die — these are the
things I believe my soul was longing for and rejecting
in other religions."
By December 2001, she was regularly attending
Netter's Bait Tefillah minyan at Temple Beth Am.
"Mare drank everything in," Rabbi Netter recalls.
"There was a certain intensity in the way that she con-
centrated, both on the Siddur and on the Torah discus-
sion that would take place." After Winningham
observed her first Yom Kippur that year, she knew she
had to convert.
"There was something about petitioning God, as a
community, for forgiveness," she says. "I knew then
that Judaism was something I couldn't live without."

JOURNEY TO JUDAISM

on page 94

9/10
2004

93