Buchdahl turns her attention back to her mother’s story. Sulja had three sisters whom Buchdahl referred to as “Minister Emo,” “Restaurant Emo,” and “Hawaii Emo” (emo is Korean for “aunt”). Minister Emo began as a devout Buddhist but converted to Christianity after Korean church families nursed her through a serious illness; she eventually became a minister running a small Korean-speaking congregation in Tacoma. Buchdahl spent every afternoon at her house as a young girl, surrounded by pictures of a blond, blue-eyed Jesus and graphic crucifixion images. Emo taught Buchdahl that her kind Jewish father would face eternal punishment and that Buchdahl could escape the same fate by accepting Jesus. Buchdahl found this logic troubling—she couldn’t believe that a just God would condemn good, innocent people for simply not knowing about Christianity—yet harbored a nagging fear that her aunt might be right. Minister Emo went on to convert both of her mother’s older sisters.

Buchdahl contrasts her aunt’s fervent faith with her father’s quieter, deed-based Judaism, which revolved around community-centered synagogue attendance, small monthly charitable contributions, and purchasing Jewish National Fund tree saplings in Israel to mark new births and defy the legacy of the Holocaust. Drawing on Confucian and Buddhist values, Sulja also rejected religious absolutism and taught Buchdahl that inner wisdom comes from lived experience, not any specific doctrine. Buchdahl concludes that she’s a spiritual “mutt,” shaped by all three traditions.

In the d’var Torah section on M’chayei Metim (“resurrection”), Buchdahl explains that resurrection is an ancient Jewish doctrine embedded in the daily Gevurot prayer; however, it was rejected by early Reform Judaism in 1885. Buchdahl references a personal experience to describe resurrection. A family trip to Costa Rica’s Arenal volcano shifted her view on the matter: She watched dead fence posts take root and sprout in the fertile volcanic soil, making resurrection tangible. In her synagogue, she now invites her congregants to restore the M’chayei Metim prayer’s traditional language—“You bring the dead to life” (80)—as an act of audacious hope for what seems beyond saving.

Buchdahl recalls loving Hebrew school at Temple Beth El. Her experience there was anchored by Rabbi Richard Rosenthal, a German-born survivor who fled Nazi Germany after witnessing Kristallnacht as a child and served the congregation for 41 years. Since Rosenthal couldn’t carry a tune, Buchdahl learned her bat-mitzvah portion from a cassette tape; he praised her chanting regardless of its accuracy. When he casually suggested that she should consider becoming a rabbi, she couldn’t imagine it—the role seemed too solemn and removed from her own life.

Buchdahl identifies her bat mitzvah as the day everything shifted for her. She invited 50 non-Jewish classmates and acted as their tour guide through family photos and the temple’s Holocaust memorial. The sanctuary overflowed, confirming her family’s yichus (good lineage)—four generations of Warnicks had attended Beth El. She asked her cousin Greg to take the first aliyah (or call-and-response blessing); Greg’s father, Alan, had died from leukemia shortly after Greg’s own bar mitzvah, lending the moment particular weight. When Buchdahl received the final aliyah, she grasped for the first time what it meant to be called to carry forward a living tradition. Chanting Torah before her non-Jewish friends, Buchdahl realized how meaningful and noble the role of rabbi was. The reception blended a swan ice sculpture with a potluck of Korean and Jewish foods. On the way home, Buchdahl felt tethered to a 4,000-year inheritance that she was now responsible for protecting and passing on.

In the d’var Torah section on Simcha (“joy), Buchdahl argues that joy is a Jewish religious obligation, not an optional bonus, drawing on the Talmud and the Chassidic tradition. Rabbi Nachman of Breslov—himself prone to depression—taught that acting joyful even in despair will eventually generate genuine joy. Modern behavioral science calls this “behavioral activation,” confirming his insight centuries later.

Buchdahl continues recounting her adolescent experiences in the Jewish community and faith. During her junior year of high school, her aunt Lily showed her an ad for the Bronfman Youth Fellowship, a selective program placing 25 North American Jewish teenagers in Israel each summer. Buchdahl applied, believing that her unusual background as a Korean Jew might help her stand out. At a finalist interview in California, Rabbi Michael Paley, the Orthodox founding director, gently informed her that traditional Jewish law traced identity through the mother and that some fellows may not regard her as Jewish—a revelation she had never encountered before. She was accepted but forewarned.

In Jerusalem, Buchdahl’s roommate Debbie, an Orthodox girl from an insular Jewish community in Brookline, Massachusetts, was baffled by Buchdahl’s life of Friday-night football games and non-Jewish classmates. Buchdahl chose not to mention her Protestant boyfriend Sam. Debbie eventually stated that Jewish law didn’t recognize Buchdahl as a Jew; another fellow suggested that she could always convert, which felt to Buchdahl like a repudiation of her entire upbringing. Despite these blows, Buchdahl’s intensive religious studies strengthened her Jewish resolve, and traveling across Israel deepened her sense of belonging. Three months later, in New York City, she told Rabbi Paley that she wanted to become a rabbi—the first time she had voiced the aspiration aloud. While he approved of the plan, Buchdahl’s mother did not. She reminded Buchdahl of three obstacles to this life path: being a woman, being Korean, and having a non-Jewish mother.

In retrospect, Buchdahl compares her experience at the fellowship to the experience her sister had three years later. Gina experienced much the same treatment as Buchdahl, as her fellows questioned the integrity of her Jewish identity. Classmates covertly manipulated her leadership of the Havdalah service—the ritual that concludes the Sabbath—to render her blessings invalid under Jewish law, leaving Gina mortified. Buchdahl asserts that she’s still furious over her sister’s treatment , invoking Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel’s distinction between those who break a law to save a person and those who break a person to uphold the law. Though she still identifies as Jewish, Gina has never joined a synagogue as an adult and doesn’t live as a practicing Jew.

The d’var Torah section on Mashber (“crisis”) traces three biblical meanings of the word: “to break” (Moses shattering the tablets), “waves” (Jonah overwhelmed in the storm), and “birthing stool” (Isaiah’s image of agonizing new life). Buchdahl asserts that these definitions of “crisis” map a path to renewal: “Break. Breathe. Push” (101).

Buchdahl continues chronicling her encounters with discrimination and identity-related challenges. Unable to mark “mixed race” or “Jewish” on her college applications, Buchdahl checked “Asian American” and enrolled at Yale despite her parents’ objections. Her suite of six roommates included Esther, a Korean American Christian from Cleveland, Ohio, whose quiet, consistent faith Buchdahl respected, and Elizabeth, who connected Buchdahl to the Women’s Center and a Take Back the Night march against sexual violence. Buchdahl attended a meeting of the Korean American Students at Yale with Esther but felt like an outsider when the group’s social life centered entirely on the Korean church. She joined Elizabeth at a Take Back the Night march but admits that she didn’t feel galvanized by other feminist causes, naively assuming that the movement’s essential work had been done.

In reflection, Buchdahl began to realize that identifying as Jewish felt most natural. She led the Reform Shabbat minyan, served as cantor for High Holiday services, and lead music at campus ceremonies. Yet she never felt fully at home at Hillel International meetings, where others moved through Jewish culture and geography with an ease she couldn’t match. At a Shabbat dinner with Bronfman alum Karen, she unknowingly talked during the silent period between ritual handwashing and the bread blessing—a small breach that left her feeling that even insiders could be made to feel like outsiders. After leading High Holiday services her junior year, a friend told Buchdahl that she “just look[ed] Jewish now” (108)—words that Buchdahl recognized as well intentioned but that erased her Korean identity. She cites poet Adrienne Rich on refusing to let others name you.

The d’var Torah section on Zehut (“identity”) uses the story of Rabbi Zusya—judged not for failing to be Moses or Akiva but for failing to be fully himself—to argue that identity is one’s unique “thisness,” a quality to embrace rather than suppress, and the foundation of what it means to become a Jewish adult.

Buchdahl offers more details from her time in college. Before her senior year, she returned to Jerusalem on a Dorot Fellowship to research women in the cantorate for her thesis. Her first setback was immediate: An influential Orthodox Israeli songwriter, herself a convert, refused to be interviewed on the grounds that she could only teach the Torah to Jews. Buchdahl shared an apartment with two college friends: Batya, who had embraced strict religious observance, and Judith, whose mother was Dr. Paula Hyman, a prominent Jewish feminist scholar and Buchdahl’s thesis adviser. Batya kept an exacting kosher kitchen; Buchdahl, who adopted a modified kashrut (kosher diet) in college to accommodate her mother’s Korean cooking, accidentally used a neutral spoon in a meat pot. Batya declared it ruined and threatened to consult a rabbi’s wife. Buchdahl was humiliated, yet she concluded that she never wanted an observance that placed the ritual status of a utensil above another person’s dignity.

Then, one day, the mentor Rabbi Jacqueline Koch Ellenson visited Buchdahl’s apartment and invited her and her roommates to pray with the Women of the Wall, a feminist group fighting for the right to wear ritual garments and read the Torah at the Western Wall. Buchdahl couldn’t keep up with the rapid, unfamiliar prayers and felt like an outsider. The group relocated to the ruins of the Hurva Synagogue to read the Torah; Buchdahl raised her hand for an aliyah to prove that she belonged, but when she recited the blessing she knew by heart, the assembled women corrected her for using words that were incorrect in the traditional prayer.

Upset, Buchdahl called her mother from Jerusalem in tears, saying that she no longer wanted to be Jewish. Her mother asked, “Is that really possible?” (121), forcing Buchdahl to recognize her Jewish identity as no more separable from her than being Korean or a woman. She hung up relieved.

In the d’var Torah section on Shikhecha (“forgotten”), Buchdahl argues that forgetting is a necessary brain function and draws on the Torah’s law requiring farmers to leave behind harvest sheaves for the poor. She holds that intentional forgetting—for example, pardoning a criminal record or releasing a grudge—can serve a higher purpose than holding on.

Buchdahl reflects on her experiences in the wake of returning from Jerusalem. Months after her difficult Jerusalem summer, she attended a Jewish education conference in San Antonio, Texas, where she joined a choir session led by composer Debbie Friedman, whose music had shaped her childhood. Friedman opened with the words “We are all broken” and lead the group in a healing prayer song (126). For the first time, Buchdahl let herself acknowledge her vulnerability, crying openly and finding catharsis in the collective response. She realized that perpetually feeling like a stranger may be the most Jewish thing about her.

At the same conference, Buchdahl sought out the conservative rabbi and scholar Rabbi Elliot Dorff to discuss conversion. He explained that giyur—the Jewish term—differs fundamentally from the Western conversio, as it’s an embrace of a Jewish soul that is always present rather than a complete transformation. Relieved by his reframing, Buchdahl decided to pursue giyur to ritualize the internal journey she had already traveled.

Buchdahl called Rabbi Richard Rosenthal in Tacoma, who immediately affirmed her Jewishness and agreed to convene a beit din (a rabbinic court) of three Reform rabbis—himself, Rabbi James Mirel, and Rabbi David Fine. During winter break of her senior year, they traveled to the Sephardic Bikur Holim synagogue in Seattle, which had a mikvah (a ritual bath). In front of the rabbis, Buchdahl thanked both her Jewish father and Buddhist mother for shaping her Jewish soul. She then immersed herself fully in the ritual bath, reciting the traditional blessing, and emerged to sing the Shehecheyanu—a prayer of gratitude for reaching this moment—with her family. She identifies the ceremony as  both a reaffirmation and rebirth, which she chose freely.

The d’var Torah section on Shevarim (“brokenness”) contrasts the Genesis ideal of perfection with the Kabbalistic creation narrative, in which God contracts to make space, pours Divine Light into vessels that shatter, and tasks human beings with gathering the scattered sparks. Buchdahl thus holds that brokenness, not perfection, is our true inheritance and the source of our work in the world. She closes by invoking Leonard Cohen’s image that cracks let the light in.