Pilgrimage of a Proselyte: From Auschwitz to Jerusalem

Like a number of people whom I've read conversion memoirs of or memoirs of their return to their birth religion of Judaism, David Patterson also was active in a lot of the social movements of the Sixties and early Seventies, although unlike most of those other memoirs, he doesn't really dwell on the path that led him to become Jewish or his life until his conversion. This book focuses upon how his intense connection with the Shoah and the memoirs and literature of the Shoah were the catalyst in leading him to become Jewish, and the pilgrimage he felt he had to embark upon shortly after converting. He felt he could not call himself a Jew or a human being until he had seen the sights of some of the death camps, topped off by going to Jerusalem (which was his third visit to Israel) and Amsterdam. Mr. Patterson first heads to Poland, seeing the sights of Treblinka (what remains of it anyway), Majdanek, and Oswiecim-Brzezinka (Auschwitz-Birkenau), writing down his reflections and discoveries as he goes along, in the journal that was to become this book. He then leaves Poland to go to Israel, primarily visiting the Western Wall and Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, but also visiting the writer and Shoah memoirist Yehiel De-Nur, known as Ha-Katzenik, Yehiel's ailing wife Eliyah, and his friends the Gouris. During his stay in Israel, a lot of the Falashim (Ethiopian Jews) are airlifted into Israel, an event he also finds time to reflect on. This is clearly a very personal book, based on the very personal notes Mr. Patterson took during his pilgrimage, and thus at times it does have the feel of a personal journal that wasn't intended for publication. That's not to say it's a huge shortcoming of the book, just that at times it just doesn't read like a professional book. And I know that Mr. Patterson intended no disrespect in the section about his visit to the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, but I thought it was rather infantilising how he kept referring to her as a "little girl" and a "child." Last I checked, she was 15 years old, which most people would consider a young woman, not a "little girl." Another thing that I noticed was how at times some of the prose seemed a little overwrought and maudlin.

David Patterson, author of this book, converted to Judaism because he believes the religion is true. But in many ways, even after his conversion ceremony, he still did not FEEL like a Jew. He had not yet come to the point of being able to feel Jewish "in his bones" as the Hasidic masters would say. So he undertook a personal pilgrimage that would begin by visiting the sites of the concentration camps, and end in the Holy City of Jerusalem. Along the way, he would confront his own fears and joys as he grappled with the enormity of the Holocaust, and the knots of fear in his stomach when when he was asked by two drunken Poles if he was an Israeli... This book is based on his daily journal from that pilgrimage. Holding nothing back, David bares his soul for all to see. The result is a deeply sensitive testimony to one man's journey, but it is also one of the most moving pieces of prose I have read in a long time. He does not claim to have all the answers, but he asks questions which plumb the depths of the human heart. I recommend this book to anyone contemplating conversion to Judaism, but also to those who were born Jewish, too. For Jews who wonder if converts can ever be "real Jews," this book answers in the affirmative. In many ways, David Patterson, despite his gentile birth, is far more Jewish than many of us who sometimes take the gift of our Jewishness for granted.