How I Became Jewish

I was raised in a normal Portuguese catholic family. My father, who died when I was thirteen years-old, even studied in a catholic seminary for some years, maybe to become a priest or maybe just to have a free education, I don't know. My mother was for some time a catechism teacher for children. Since my early years I used to go to the church on Sundays, attended the catechism classes for eight years after the Sunday religious service and afterwards I joined a catholic youth group. Most of the members of the youth group are still very close friends of mine. I can say with no shame, that I was very committed to the catholic faith. I really enjoyed singing with the group at the church, for instance. I was always interested in God and spirituality in general, despite that I was not very deeply connected to the ritual side of religion. Till the age of twenty I lived in a village close to the town of Batalha, famous for its big gothic monastery. Then I moved to Lisbon, the capital of Portugal, to study journalism at the Universidade Ti©cnica (Technical University).

After I finished my studies I worked as a trainee for 4 months at a news' radio station in Lisbon. I also worked for about a month in a catholic newspaper which was the only job I got at the time!. Most of the time after I finished university, I was unemployed because all the available jobs demanded me to work on Shabbat (the holy day for Jewish people). Despite that I wasn't Jewish and still didn't know many Jewish laws, I knew that I couldn't work on Shabbat. It was a bit complicated to depend for so long on my mother for living...