There is a LOT you can learn about Judaism: Torah, Hebrew, prayer, Shabbat, holidays, Jewish history, halacha – congratulations, you have acquired approximately 8,000 Lego pieces. Now what are you supposed to build with them?
At some point, learning about Judaism has to become living a Jewish life. And that doesn’t happen by waiting until you finally know “enough.” In this video, we’re talking about how to start small, build Jewish practices into the rhythms of your actual life, use the Jewish calendar to guide what comes next, and keep adding one sustainable piece at a time.
Want help building your Jewish life?
That’s exactly what we do inside the Bayit – practical support, resources, accountability, and community for people converting to Judaism or otherwise building a Jewish life from scratch.
The Bayit is open to new members through September 3.
Learn more and join Bayit Builders here.
Transcript below.
Transcript:
There is a lot you can learn about Judaism. You can study Torah, read books, watch YouTube videos!
Learn Hebrew, take classes.
But at some point you run into a different question. How do I actually build a Jewish life from all these little Lego pieces?
What do you do with all this information?
Hi, I’m Kochava. I’m a Jewish convert, and I’ve been helping people convert to Judaism since 2010 through my blog, BuildingaJewishLife.com.
And right now, my membership, Bayit Builders, is open to new members if you want practical help building a Jewish life from scratch. You can learn more by clicking the link in the description below.
So number one, stop treating Judaism like a curriculum you can finish. You’ll never finish it. The most learned rabbi you know still has eons of information they do not know.
But you get it into your head that, “I need to learn enough so then I can start doing.”
But really, start doing as soon as you start learning. Yeah, you’re gonna do it wrong. Maybe you might even be foolish. That’s okay. Everyone feels foolish when they start out.
You’ll get things wrong, but that’s how you learn. And it makes for really good stories later.
Learning and living have to happen together.
So for instance, if you’re learning about Shabbat and wanna start a Shabbat practice, you learn a little bit, you can go ahead and start implementing that little bit even if you don’t know all the other pieces. Just start with the pieces you got.
And that brings us to two, start with the rhythms.
Judaism gives us recurring rhythms like Shabbat.
There are daily rhythms: prayers, practices, blessings.
There is the weekly practice of Shabbat.
There is the monthly or yearly practice of holidays.
And then there’s also life cycle events: births, deaths, conversions, weddings.
So instead of just asking that blanket question of, “How do I do Judaism?” Look for pockets where Judaism can fit into the natural rhythms of the life you already have. You have a daily rhythm. You have a weekly rhythm. There are ways you can make those rhythms Jewish.
Again, take the piece you know and run with it. Everything else will figure itself out in time.
And that’s a good point. Three, pick one place to begin.
It’s not sexy, but the easiest way to build a habit is slowly and small. Pick one thing, make it small, make it so small that it feels foolish and ridiculous, because then you can’t fail at doing it. When it feels ridiculously small, that’s the one you want, because that’s the one you can continue to do week in and week out, month after month, year after year.
Choose something that is realistic in your actual lived life, not your ideal life.
Choose something that matters to you, and choose something that interests you. Mattering and interesting may be two different questions.
And ideally, find something that connects you with a Jewish community, if you’re near one. If you’re not near one, find things that connect you to the larger Jewish community here on the internet.
You can feel like your starting point says something about you and your Jewish practice, but it doesn’t. It’s just a starting point. It could have been anything. So just go with the one that makes the most sense.
And when you do that, build practices, not aspirations.
So for instance, “I wanna learn more Torah” is not a practice. That’s an aspiration.
A goal is, “I’ll read the weekly Parsha, the weekly Torah portion, over breakfast on Sunday morning.” That’s a goal and a practice. And it’s easy and it’s doable.
So you wanna take an idea, these aspirations, “I wanna learn more Torah,” “I wanna connect to the Jewish calendar,” ” I wanna have a Shabbat practice.” Then pick one specific action. And then pick a place in your life, a time and a space.
Is it 8:00 PM on Tuesdays?
Is it lunch on Fridays?
And then use the normal habit-building techniques like setting alarms, setting calendar events, other things to help make sure it actually happens.
And importantly, I want you to repeat before you add.
Get into a good rhythm and a solid habit before you start adding the next habit. You are going to want to do all the things. Don’t.
Pick one thing, then do another thing, then do another thing, and slowly work your way up the staircase step by step.
The elaborate thing you’re imagining isn’t actually sustainable Doing this piece by piece, small step at a time, is not a failure of building a Jewish life. That is the only successful means for building a Jewish life I’ve ever seen.
The people who go zero to 60 burn out and end up leaving Judaism altogether because it feels impossible. Don’t let that be you.
Messy and imperfect is still holy.
And for help, let the Jewish calendar tell you what comes next. This is taking you from individual habits to seasons.
Like right now, we are in the Jewish month of Elul, and then Rosh Hashanah is coming, and then Yom Kippur, and then Sukkot, and then Simchat Torah, and on and on through the Jewish year.
Whatever is coming up next, put a little pin in it and start working towards it. Just learn something about that thing, and then see what you could implement from that. That way you’re always learning and growing.
Each season gives you new opportunities.
And most importantly, don’t build by yourself. No one likes hearing this, but a Jewish community is necessary. You won’t be able to convert without it.
No legitimate conversion allows you to, in any denomination, allows you to convert without being actively involved in a in-person Jewish community. And most of you don’t live anywhere near a Jewish community right now.
If you’re lucky, it’s across town. If you’re unlucky, it’s in another country.
Do the best you can where you are right now, but always be looking forward to finding a way for you to move closer to that in-person Jewish community for yourself.
The steps towards that could be small. Starting to learn about the real estate in the area, starting to see whether you need to change your professional certifications. There are lots of steps towards moving towards a community. Take it a little bit at a time.
But while you’re working towards that community, take advantage of the online community, and that includes my membership, Bayit Builders, which is open to new members right now.
It’s for anyone building a Jewish life from scratch.
We work together through Jewish life the same way that I’ve been advocating in this video, step by step, season by season.
And if you wanna learn more about what we do for that, click the link down in the description below.
And if you wanna learn more about building your own Jewish education from scratch, check out this video here.
