Leah felt the dread familiar to every baalas teshuva when confronted with such basic questions. How to distill into a few words, a few sentences, the epic journey they have been through without sounding ridiculous? But it was usually a secular interlocutor with an axe to grind who posed such challenges, not someone who had been a religious Jew from birth. What to say to this troubled girl that would not sound like some cliché from a proselytizing website? She agonized.

“I never felt at home in the family and place into which I was born. I always felt something was missing. Everything I did, even the fun I had, it all seemed artificial and a bit hollow, like a child pretending to be a mother or a soldier or an actress. I never felt grounded, at home, in my own skin, until I came here and fell in love with your tateh.”

“But all the laws, all the rules!”

Leah nodded. “It’s hard, I’ll admit it. And I don’t always understand the reasons for so many things. But in the end, it has truly brought me closer to my Creator. I feel I know Him better now. Every struggle I have in keeping His laws—even the ones I can’t understand—brings me closer to Him and Him to me.” She hesitated. That was really not the whole story, not even the most important part of it.

“Look, Shaindele. I love HaShem, our HaShem, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, because He gave us the Torah, all the laws we live by. What is the Torah really asking of us? To be kind to one another. To be just. Not to harm anyone or cause them pain or loss or embarrassment. The Ten Commandments that were written by God on two tablets of stone, what do they say? Don’t steal. Don’t lie in court as a witness. Honor your parents. Don’t murder. Don’t commit adultery or even secretly covet anything in your heart that belongs to someone else. And if you don’t worship idols, and have only one God, who you love and fear, and respect, never throwing His name around, then you’ll keep the other things He’s asking of you as well.”

“Like Shabbos.”

“Yes. Like the Sabbath.”

“It sounds so goyish when you say it like that.”

“Well, the Commandments are part of all Western religions. It’s something we Jews gave the world to make it a better place, a kinder, more just place. This is our God. He belongs to us, and we to Him.”

“Okay, I understand. But what does that have to do with not meeting a boy and going to a jazz club in Greenwich Village? What does it have to do with not dancing in your own house to music?”