Leaving Bacon Behind

Leaving Bacon Behind, by Melvin S Marsh, is an interesting look into the conversion process for Judaism. The book is part instruction manual and part the author's own conversion story. I found the book to be engaging and compelling. The author’s conversion story is certainly interesting, and most certainly the only LGBTQ convert to Judaism I'm aware of, not like that is saying much. Becoming Jewish seems like a difficult process in many ways; it takes dedication, is a custom in fact, for a Rabbi to reject a potential applicant three times, stemming from an era when conversion was not legal.

I learned quite a bit about Jewish customs and culture by reading the book. I learned not too long ago that I'm part Ashkenazi Jewish, and so reading the book was learning about my own heritage in a way. The writing is engaging in and of itself. The author has a wealth of knowledge and the way he shares it is interesting. I have many times heard the term orthodox as it relates to Judaism, but I didn’t really have any other movements to contrast it with. Now, I do. There are conservative, liberal, reform movements, and more. I found myself wanting to learn more about Judaism the more I read. 

Melvin has a good sense of humor as well, as he tells his story, including a few references to one of my favorite musicals, Fiddler on the Roof. The musical also played an important role in the author deciding their Jewish name, which includes Mordecai within it (yes like Uncle Mordecai and musicians! [ok, no there weren’t any Musicians]) 

I will admit, sometimes all the rules of Judaism cause my mind to spin. The rules get way more specific, but the general idea is you can't engage in acts of creation or destruction on Sabbat. What I didn’t realize until reading this book is that something as mundane as tearing toilet paper off a roll could be considered an act of destruction.

My one initial complaint was there was often a lot of term-dropping in the book. However, after finishing the book, I noticed there is a glossary at the end. So oops, I should have looked at that earlier.  Overall I really enjoyed the book and highly recommend it to anyone looking to learn more about Judaism. After reading, I feel like I have a lot more to learn; there are a lot of customs, beliefs, and culture to take in, and reading this book is just dipping your toes in the water. 

I’m also doing something unique here, the next section will only appear in the Leaf Bound Review portion of this book review. It is perhaps a bit more rambly than I want in an amazon book review, hence exclusive to this website.

I also learned about rules for the amount of time one must wait between eating meat and milk. See there is a rule in the Bible about not eating meat cooked in its mother’s milk. In the most literal sense, it means don't eat beef and milk from its literal mother at the same time. This rule has a more broad interpretation, don't eat beef and milk at the same time (after all who is to say, the particular milk you are drinking is not from the mother of the particular cow you are eating? [granted, beef and dairy cows are generally different breeds, so I think that is pretty unlikely]).  The amount of time between beef and milk consumption though is a matter of 

custom rather than a universal rule. 

One observation: the author doesn't spell out God in the book, but rather G-d. Hebrew, like many ancient languages, doesn't use vowels, so the name of God is spelled YHWH (or JHVH in Latin). I think writing out vowels to these names might be offensive to a Jewish person, so I won't, but I don't think I've seen someone omit the vowels from the word God before. 

Length: 182 pages

Kindle Unlimited: No

https://www.amazon.com/Leaving-Bacon-Behind-How-Conversion/dp/1960142895