There's that pesky question again.

This past Shabbos, we hosted a family consisting of an intermarried couple (Jewish mother, non-Jewish father) and their five kids. They are interested in becoming more observant, and wanted to try the full Shabbos experience. We didn't really know them--she is the daughter of someone I work with and know only casually--but we're into kiruv and so we invited them, all seven of them, to stay with us for Shabbos.

It wasn't a total wash, although the parents summarily piled four of the five into their minivan at 9 am on Saturday because the kids were just too off the wall with no TV. Their daughter, who is eleven and a delight, decided to stay, and we had a nice morning with the two of us and Barak. There was an aufruf at a nearby shul that we decided to go to, and she was shocked and delighted to discover that the bag of candy she was handed upon entry was supposed to be HURLED ACROSS THE SHUL DIRECTLY AT THE GUY READING FROM THE TORAH. ("I'm supposed to throw it?" she asked incredulously. "Not just allowed, but we're supposed to throw candy in temple?" Yep.) We came home, put Barak down for his nap, read Harry Potter companionably on the couch for an hour or so, ate lunch, ate brownies, went to a friend's, ate more brownies, and it was time for Havdala. She wants to come back, and it's fine with us.

Friday night (backing up a little), after the kids had gone to bed, the four adults sat in the kitchen talking. It's always a little odd having non-religious Jews or non-Jews in the house on Shabbos--not in a bad way, but there are so many things that we take for granted that they just didn't know. They got the "don't touch the lights" business, and I taped the switches just to be safe. But I wasn't quite expecting to be asked, innocently, in front of two grown men, "Do you go to the mikva?" Ummm. Can we talk about that later?

She also asked me a question that I haven't heard in a long time, just because most of the people I know these days either have known me for years, are religious Jews, or don't know that I was ever anything but a religious Jew. She asked, "What made you decide to become religious?"

I always find it strange that so many people feel so free to ask me that question. To me, it's so personal--something like asking "What did you find so attractive about your husband that you decided to marry him?" It's not something that I would ever ask a stranger or even a casual acquaintance. Actually, I wouldn't ask it of anybody. But I've been asked it a lot, over the last ten years or so.

The short answer is, "It just happened." For me, there was never any real deciding involved. It was like taking off a pair of too-tight heels and sliding your abused feet into slippers. What made you decide to take off the shoes? Your feet hurt--it didn't take a lot of thought. Or being hungry, and eating. What made you decide to eat? Um, hunger. You didn't sit and think, hmm, I'm hungry, what should I do about this? You saw the thing you needed, and never thought twice.

The years that I spent being an atheist were more of a reaction to what I saw of religion (and the lack thereof) growing up. A lot of hypocrisy, a lot of treating other people badly, a lot of all kinds of things I was told we weren't supposed to do. I hated it. I poked my nose into a few different religions, and never found anything that felt right. This was in my late teens or somewhere around there. By the time I got to college, I had decided that organized religion was not much more than a good means of social control, and ditched the whole idea.

But, well, that never really felt right either. And so, over the course of a number of years, I found myself moving back to Yiddishkeit, from reform to conservative to orthodox shuls, and eventually to where I am now, in a community full of men in black hats and women who wear long sleeves and stockings in August. And it's the happiest and most comfortable I've ever been.

There are lots of perfectly good religions out there--for other people. But I'm a Jew, and being anything other than a Jew who tries just didn't feel right. I've been accused of using religion as a "crutch," which is something that orthodox Jews pretty much roll their eyes at, because of the total lack of understanding it demonstrates. Being a religious Jew makes life so much more of a challenge. It doesn't make your life any easier. It forces you to think. It forces you to work at being a better person. It forces you to keep God front and center in everything you do. For me, that makes life so much more worthwhile.

For me, this was a way of life that just fit. I liked the values. I liked the sense of community. I liked the fact that the guys I met on dates didn't even consider laying a hand on me, and that nobody thought I was freakish for not having or wanting a TV, and that the families I met were, overwhelmingly if not without exception, happy, close, and loving. I got a look inside that world, a world of people who were an awful lot like what I wanted to be, and I thought, "Why do I need to look for anything else? This is me. This is who I am. This is what I'm supposed to be."

No, it hasn't all been easy or without compromises. My own family was, to put it mildly, not happy with the way I moved religiously, and that was (and remains) hard. It isn't easy to not be able to eat in the homes of my non-Jewish friends, especially when I've traveled a long way to see them and the last thing I want is to hurt anyone's feelings. And I know that my boss, who is fabulous in pretty much all respects, thinks that I'm oppressed, and that grates. But it's never even crossed my mind to wonder if I made the right choice. I never even thought to wonder what my life would be like if I'd chosen differently. Because I don't think I ever chose at all.