My Year as a Jew

How does a Norwegian Quaker from Montana end up at the Jewish Outreach Center carrying Torah scrolls? Shelley Kirilenko grew up outside of Missoula in a blue-collar neighborhood called Target Range. Her neighbors were truck drivers and loggers and cowboys, and her bedroom window looked out on a massive horse pasture. Her idea of diversity was seeing the name Olsen spelled with an –on instead of an -en. She had never met anyone who didn’t celebrate Christmas and had only a vague notion of what Chanukah and Passover were. The only encounter she had with Judaism in her childhood was eating kosher pickles. Fast-forward twenty years: Shelley moves to Washington DC after her husband snags a job with the government. On a lark, she signs up for a free crash course in Hebrew at a place called the Jewish Outreach Center. Little did she know that she would end up being part of a world she never even knew existed. A world of lighting Shabbat candles and reciting the Shema and getting tipsy on Purim. A world of Torah study and joy and atonement. For one year she would study Hebrew and celebrate Jewish holidays. A cowgirl from Montana among pious Orthodox people. This book is the product of that year.