H eadlines
Shavuot Continued from Page 4
Judaism,” and during the first
conversion ceremony of the
school’s students, Goodblatt
gave the charge.

“You are not 80 percent, 90
per cent or 98 percent Jewish,”
Goodblatt is reported to have
said. “You are 100 percent Jewish
now. Don’t let any uninformed
person say that you are outsiders.

The Torah declares you to be
part of the Jewish faith.”
The longtime rabbi of
Congregation Beth Am Israel was
president of the Board of Rabbis of
Greater Philadelphia, according
to his obituary in The New York
Times, and died in 1978. Though
Cooper never met Goodblatt,
the rabbi said that Goodblatt’s
reputation for openness to poten-
tial converts was well-known and
ahead of his time.

“That was not the norm,
because the norm was that we
sort of discouraged conversion,”
said Cooper, who has been
involved with the academy for
30 years. “As I understand, he
was very open, very embracing
and welcoming.”
That spirit of openness is
what attracts students like
Catherine Herling.

Raised in a Southern Baptist
home outside of Annapolis,
Maryland, Herling, 26, had a
crisis of faith in college. She
asked her then-boyfriend,
Madison Herling, if it was OK
for her to ask him questions
about Judaism as needed. Her
interest in Judaism grew and
grew and, after the pair was
married, Herling, a couples
and families therapist in
Bala Cynwyd, decided that
she would convert. It was a
familiar ride to her husband;
his mother had converted
when she married his father.

And the familiarity ran
deeper than that. Herling’s
mother had herself attended
the academy for her conversion
process, a coincidence revealed
to Catherine Herling only after
she’d began at the academy on
the recommendation of Rabbi
Seth Haaz, of Har Zion Temple
in Penn Valley.

Herling began in-person
classes during the fall of 2019,
switching to online at the onset
of the pandemic. She’s come to
love Judaism — its languages,
its traditions — but reserves
special praise for the spirit
of inquiry that the academy
fostered. In Christianity, she
said, “sometimes it doesn’t feel
like there is universal permis-
sion to ask questions. And I
really found it to be comforting
to be able to say, ‘Oh, I can
ask these questions and it not
be seen as me questioning the
faith,’” Herling said.

Herling will complete her
conversion process this August.

That spirit of inquiry is
similarly encouraging to
Eric Papa.

Papa, 40, lives in Durham,
North Carolina with his husband
Gill Segal and their two children.

Papa was born Catholic, but
as he began to understand his
sexuality, he came to feel alien-
ated from the church. Eventually,
he stopped practicing.

During the years that he
lived in Philadelphia, Papa came
to know many Jewish people,
including Segal, who is an
Israeli. Segal had long expressed
a desire to raise his children
in Jewish tradition, and Papa,
though scarred by his previous
entanglement with religious life,
decided that if he was going to
be raising Jewish children, there
was more he needed to learn.

“I can’t just be a passive
bystander in the house,” he said.

“I need to know more about it.”
Rabbi Jen Feldman, a
Reconstructionist Rabbinical
College graduate in Durham,
introduced Papa to the academy
last year. Over the course of a
full 23-week cycle conducted
via Zoom, Papa connected to
Judaism and himself in ways
that were totally surprising to
him. More than anything, he
found a place where he could
ask questions without shame.

“Throughout this class,
I’ve learned that it’s OK to be a
wrestler with God, to not know
whether or not He’s real, or not
real,” Papa said. “And hearing
somebody say that to me was like
having a ton lifted off of my chest.

It was like you can breathe.”
Papa will continue his studies
with Feldman in Durham, and
hasn’t yet completed his conver-
sion process. But he’s already
learned that religion, which
once seemed out of reach for
him, can be a welcoming harbor
for him and his family. l
jbernstein@jewishexponent.com; 215-832-0740
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