The music was so simple, and yet it surged around me. The cantor sang along with a piano, banging a tambourine against his leg. At the end of a lingered “ahhhh,” the cantor would begin the next round of hopeful Hebrew chorus with a hand thumped on the podium. The vibration went up through the active microphone, truly starting the refrain off with a bang.

I had no idea what they were saying. I had no idea what I was saying as I stumbled along, trying hard to remember what I had studied briefly eight years before. The right-to-left font and the accompanying vowel notations were vaguely human to me, but with each song were coming more and more alive.

At the front, the rabbi swayed and clapped with a young boy, a guest of honor whose entry into Jewish manhood would be celebrated tomorrow. I had met privately with the rabbi before; he was a kind, young man, eight years out of the rabbinate and three years into his tenure at his synagogue. The boy looked nervous as hell, a bare whisper of a smile tugging at his mouth as though a stroke had taken the other half.

I took the hand of my fiancée beside me. My lips formed the only words I’d had committed to memory, and bobbed my head, trying to convey encouragement for him to try. He instead narrowed his eyes at me with an amused half-grin. I knew he was amused to see me singing along at a religious service; I hoped he saw also the effect that this faith had on me. It was a positive effect that drew me out of my shell, normally bitter at the pervasive Christianity being shoved upon me from all angles. Instead of saying “Amen” to there being only one (now dead) man able to save me, I sang “Amen” (pronounced “ah-main”) to the original covenant with G-d, and to the promises the Jewish people had made with G-d thousands of years ago.

I watched both the rabbi and the cantor carefully. I was unaccustomed to the yarmulkes on their heads, and of men in their positions of leadership in this service being in something other than a vestment. Vestments had always looked like a giant tablecloth with a hole for the priest’s head to me. The rabbi and cantor both stood there, plain but elegant, in their plain blazers and ties. They seemed somehow more honest, less costumed, than the priests of my youth. I loved them more for their honesty than for anything else that night, except for maybe their welcome reception of my fiancée and myself, an interfaith family in the making.

In the moment of silent prayer, I followed the prayer book in praying that my lips would not deceive, and then prayed for success on my upcoming exams and in my attempts to convert.

I prayed that my conversion would not kill my relationship with my fiancée, that it would not ruin my relationships with his and my families, and that someday my children would embrace it as well.

I prayed that my fiancée would not be alienated from our family because of my choices. I prayed that he would accept my refusal of our children being baptized.

I prayed and prayed and prayed and finally, sat down.

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