HaLeivi asked BT’s and Gerim a good question “To those who did make the decision, was it an intellectual discovery, or an inner feeling, or a deeper pull based on both or more? ?
I fall under these categories, so I am qualified to answer.
I had like little signs and guide posts all along the way from the time I was a kid, until I made my move back to Yiddishkeit as an adult. So it was like a feeling, or a spiritual intuitive thing. However, there were things in the goyisher velt that just didn’t sit right with me, that I KNEW deep down were wrong. FOr example, in my wild early 20’s I went into living and sharing accomodations with a Yoga Student, and one day I come in the kitchen to find a big huge stone budda statue sitting on the shelf where a microwave oven should be. So it like really irked me, and I couldn’t work around it, so I threw a tea towel over its head! THe yoga student came home, dumbfounded and couldn’t understand why I would do that.
I never thought out my return. I never weighed or accounted things. I just knew it made sense after having fasted holding myself in different yoga postures, meditating in the wild, Bowing to Allah in the middle east, and praying on Ramadan, after eating vegan and reading books on how to be enlightened. I just woke up one day and said “You know…if i was born a Jew…maybe there was a reason. Maybe G-d made me a Jew for a reason, and there are answers there. Maybe i should just go check it out”. After all I have tried everythign else, and I ought to respect the path I was born into.
And voila,,,The truth is Great!