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Nahanni: Hi everyone, it’s Nahanni Rous, here with a special Mother’s Day episode of Can We Talk? This one is personal. It’s in memory of my own mother, who died this winter. A few months before she died, I recorded this interview with her at my parents’ house in Durham, New Hampshire.

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Nahanni: It’s November 10, is that what we said?

Emma: Yes.

Nahanni: November 10, 2024, and I'm interviewing my mom, Emma Rous. Can you describe where we're sitting right now?

Emma: We are in the main living room of a house Walter and I built over 40 years ago. Sunny, late fall day, leaves mostly down. Beautiful, looking out the windows.

Nahanni: My mother was into her second year of living with cancer. She was participating in a clinical trial, but we knew she didn’t have much time left. I wanted to talk to my mom about her conversion to Judaism, a choice she made that shaped our family and who I am. She was glad to talk—about why she converted, how she felt about it, and what some of the challenges and rewards were.

Emma: I'm happy to do it. I'm at 80, and probably close to the end, have an urge to share whatever slight wisdom I have. I feel like I should have wisdom to share, anyway. [laughs]

Nahanni: So say, first, when and where you were born.

Emma: I was born in Holyoke, Mass, October 1, 1944. I tell the medical staff this five times every time I visit. [laughs]

Nahanni: Can you start by describing the atmosphere that you grew up in, the background that you grew up in?

Emma: Yeah. I think it's an important piece of understanding why I was able to convert and interested and ready to convert. So my mom grew up Catholic. She married my dad who was Protestant and was done with the Catholic church at that point. But the Italian and the food and the occasional Italian phrases thrown in, that was part of my growing up.

Nahanni: Yeah.

Emma: After I was maybe five or six, I remember it clearly. She stood up in church and joined the church and surprised my dad. But they weren't big churchgoers. I, however, got very involved with church. I went to Sunday school. I liked getting dressed up and going to services. I'd sit with my best friend, I sang in the choir. And as I got older, I got involved with Pilgrim Fellowship, which was the teenage gathering place. And I was selected to go to a state conference where I was elected as secretary. So I became a state officer in Massachusetts.

And it was a real pivotal experience for me. It opened my eyes to social issues, particularly the civil rights movement was in high gear then. I graduated from high school in ’62. So we were seeing nightly news about, you know, firehosing protestors, and even worse, beatings. And my parents thought these were troublemakers. I saw it so differently, and it was the beginning of a real split with my parents in terms of politics.

But I always felt like I was on some kind of spiritual quest. And studying scripture and talking about it in groups was very meaningful to me.

Nahanni: So the youth group was connected with those politics at that time for you?

Emma: Yes, yes. People in the state Pilgrim Fellowship officer level, and there was something called the Student Christian Movement. There was a lot of exchange between those groups. People would come back and report on what they had witnessed and participated in. They taught us the Freedom songs.

So when I went to college, I became the head of the Protestant group at Mount Holyoke. But after college, my network was gone. I didn't have any kind of involvement with religion. So okay, fast forward to meeting dad.

Nahanni: How old were you?

Emma: I think about 23 or 24. I look at pictures of us now, and I think, oh, my word, we were kids! [Nahanni laughs] What did we know? Anyway, I didn't really have much of an inkling that religion was an issue at all. I can't even remember when I learned Walter was Jewish.

Nahanni: My parents met in the late 1960s while they were both driving convertibles in a traffic jam in Harvard Square. That’s a story for another podcast. At the time, my mother was teaching in Newton public schools and getting a master’s at the Harvard School of Education. My father was studying architecture at MIT. They dated, then went their separate ways. They eventually got back together, and right away things felt more serious. My mom describes a conversation they had at the apartment my dad shared with his friend Lance.

Emma: [laughs] I foolishly was tackling the pile of dishes in their sink. Lance used to make pea soup and let the remains dry on the pots and the plates, and more fool I, I couldn't bear it, and I was doing the dishes. [both laugh]

And dad was sitting behind me. So this was a good situation for him because he didn't have to look me in the eye. And he said, “You know, this could be difficult with my family, but I think we could make it work if you were interested in converting.”

And I mean, we weren't talking about getting married, you know, this was sort of feeling out whether we could. And I, as I recall, didn't drag my feet [laughs]. I think I said, “Well, I could think about that.”

Nahanni: Did that feel like a proposal? Was he introducing a, you know, an idea about your future together that you hadn't thought of, or was it just that you hadn't talked about it?

Emma: We hadn't talked about it. I'm sure I thought about it. Yeah, I'm sure I thought about it.

Nahanni: So that was kind of evidence that he was thinking about it too.

Emma: Yeah. And you know, in terms of religion, I was ready to demythologize Christianity, the whole Jesus thing. And the congregational church, the mainline Protestant churches had been so involved in social issues and doing good work, but things were shifting toward the Evangelical movement, which had no appeal for me. So I was kind of open to a spiritual experience that was different.

But I expressed a willingness without really thinking about implications. I know I did that. I wanted to be with Walter.

So he went home to tell his parents. There was never a formal proposal.

Nahanni: You never had a moment where you decided to get married [both laugh].

Emma: No. Well, and you can kind of see why. It had to evolve. 

Nahanni: Mm-hmm.

Emma: So he described this to me later. His dad was out on a deck they had built over the laundry plant room, and Walter went out and joined him [and] described this girl he met. She went to Mount Holyoke, she's a teacher, she's not Jewish. “Oh my God. What are we gonna tell your mother?” "But she's willing to convert." "Ohhh, well, that's different." And they embraced me fully. Well, let me back up. They said we had to go talk to Uncle Sol. So we made a trip down to–

Nahanni: Why?

Emma: Because rabbis are supposed to talk you out of converting and tell you how hard it is to be a Jew [laughs]. So off we went to Philadelphia. I got the talk. I nodded. It went fine. And on the way home Walter said, “Oh, this is gonna be great!” [both laugh]

Nahanni: What were you thinking?

Emma: I guess I thought, phew, passed that hurdle [laughs]. And Uncle Sol put me in touch with Rabbi Ben-Zion Gold, who was the Hillel rabbi at Harvard. Which was really a blessing. He was wonderful.

Nahanni: How often did you meet with him?

Emma: Once a week.

Nahanni: And over what period of time?

Emma: Once a week and over a year. Until Walter's father said… And they knew Walter and I were living together, which they didn't approve of. But toward the end of that year, Walter's father said, "So how long is this rabbi going to keep working with you?" [both laugh]

The other thing Rabbi Gold did was put me in a Hebrew class with Harvard undergrads, and it was a little bit into the semester, so they were already a little ahead. And I had so much trouble with the Hebrew. It's hard to be a Jew [both laugh]. I just felt so inadequate sitting in that circle trying to read out loud in Hebrew. And it's always been a hurdle for me.

Nahanni: Do you remember other things that Rabbi Gold taught you?

Emma: Oh, there was one day when he took me into a little study and took down a volume of Talmud and showed me the original text in the middle and all the commentary all around it. I wish I had learned more of that, but I was amazed and kind of overwhelmed at the complexity of it and the depth of it. Yeah.

And so the first Jewish holiday I attended in Englewood was Yom Kippur. And Walter's mother said to Walter, "You know, this isn't a very good introduction." [both laugh]

Nahanni: She didn't think it was gonna be very much fun for you.

Emma: Right, right.

Nahanni: What do you remember about it?

Emma: I remember Walter sneaking pickles out of the refrigerator and making himself sick [laughs] and long, long services. And the prayer books they were using at Walter's Conservative shul were all Hebrew. I had no idea where we were or what was going on.

But Passover seders in Englewood were fabulous. I've always tried to live up to them.

Nahanni: How did your mother feel about you converting?

Emma: Well, she was offended. She was upset. She didn't like it, which I thought was ironic since she had done something similar. But in her mind it was different—it wasn't Christian. My dad had died by that time, so he wasn't a factor, thank goodness [laughs]. Honestly, my father would've had a fit. He was very…narrow-minded.

But it was very hard for my mother. I think she thought Walter's parents were requiring something that wasn't fair. Something like that. She felt imposed on by them. She was a quiet woman, but she did not like to be pushed around.

The first time she met them, she didn't say a word to them. It was the most awkward weekend. It was horrible. I remember at one point she said, "So are all your friends gonna be Jewish now?" [laughs] She was hard.

Nahanni: She felt betrayed.

Emma: Yeah.

Nahanni: But that changed over time.

Emma: Over time, she grew to love Walter. She adored him. She did. Yeah.

Nahanni: How did you feel as you got deeper and deeper into learning this stuff and realizing, you know, Hebrew is really hard and there's a lot to learn, and there's hard stuff and joyous stuff. So how did that feel? 

Emma: Yeah. Well, and truthfully, Walter, he did go to services with me every week, but he was not that into it. When I went to the mikvah, Rabbi Gold said, “And Walter didn't come?” It never occurred to either one of us that he'd want to be there. It was just something to—one more step, you know. Didn't have big symbolic significance for him.

And I think I've told you the story about my beit din at my mikvah.

Nahanni: Oh, no, I wanted to ask you about that.

Emma: No one really explained to me exactly what was going to happen. Rabbi Gold had brought in these two old geezers from Cambridge who were charged to ask me questions and Shavuot was coming up. So they asked me about the meaning of Shavuot, and I went on and on about it having been an agricultural holiday, and they looked at each other. And I said, “Oh, and the giving of the Torah!” [both laugh] Whew. I kind of missed the main point.

Nahanni: Sounds like you got right there.

Emma: I got it, I got it. But yeah, there was a moment.

Nahanni: So it was Rabbi Gold teaching you and then Dad there to help you. But were there any Jewish women who were kind of taking you under their wing ever?

Emma: Aunt Sophie sent me The Jewish Catalog when it came out. I have a feeling that was after we got married, but I pored over that. That was very helpful. So that meant a lot to me and it fit right in with the do-it-yourself ethic. But no, I wasn't talking to other Jewish women. I was kind of on my own trying to figure it out.

Nahanni: What were your conversations with Dad like—did you actively make decisions about it?

Emma: Well, I think we actively talked about keeping kosher. Yeah, for sure. And I kind of enjoyed going into the kosher markets in Brookline, and there was one in the South End that would singe the chicken feet for me before I… it’s sort of this cultural stuff that I liked doing.

Nahanni: When did you stop doing that?

Emma: When we moved to New Hampshire. And it was harder to get to a kosher market.

Nahanni: Mm-hmm. And what were the goals for raising your kids?

Emma: Well, I always said that I thought kids should grow up with strong traditions. And I didn’t see too much point in a mixed tradition. You know, like we knew of one family living near Grandma where one kid went to church and one kid went to shul, and I thought that was a strange solution. I thought the family should be sharing a tradition, and Walter’s family had such a rich tradition.

Nahanni: Sometimes they say that it’s the mother who kind of creates the traditions in the family and passes on the traditions. Do you feel like that’s been true for you?

Emma: Yeah. I mean, I would turn to Dad and say, "So how did you do this at home?" And Hanukkah, for example, was very low-key in their house. Each kid had a turn to give people something, and it was usually some homemade little thing. They didn’t do a big deal about Hanukkah, which is the right thing to do.

Yeah, so…But he didn’t instigate too much. We built treehouses for Sukkot a few times. He liked that.

Nahanni: And when you say treehouses, you do mean treehouses.

Emma: Yeah. They were right out here. Unfortunately, those trees fell. Yeah. With their houses.

Nahanni: The treehouse sukkah is just one example of how my parents teamed up to put their own creative stamp on Jewish holidays. They also pioneered a tabletop puppet show for the seders they hosted. But teaching me the aleph bet, enrolling me in Hebrew school, making sure I was prepared for my bat mitzvah—my mom was the driving force behind all of that. When I was little, she baked challah with me and came into my first-grade class to teach about Hanukkah.

Nahanni: What would you say have been some of the biggest challenges about converting?

Emma: Well, this sense that I was having to invent my Jewishness. Just the feeling of kind of being in a foreign country, you know, learning a new language, new customs. Yeah. It hit me really clearly last year when we hosted the Wabanaki group at Farmers Hill.

Nahanni: My parents were part of a dialogue and cultural exchange retreat that included people from the Wabanaki tribe in New Hampshire and Vermont.

Emma: They had all grown up as assimilated Americans and they were trying to recapture their Indian tradition. And they had to kind of make it up as they went along, learn chants, learn… They were studying Wabanaki language, learn prayers, learn drumming, participate in communal events. And I thought, wait, that’s just like me trying to create a Jewish identity that I didn’t really grow up with… just like me. Yeah.

Nahanni: I think there are a lot of people who were born Jewish who don’t grow up with a lot of knowledge or being taught very much who also feel like that, if you get older and have to learn it all from scratch. 

Emma: Right…It’s probably not a bad thing that Dad didn’t have really strong commitments to certain practices or beliefs, because it left me free to make of it what worked for me.

Nahanni: Over the years, my mom became more and more active in the Jewish community. A lot of her involvement happened when I was already out of the house. She attended adult study classes at their synagogue in Dover, New Hampshire. When my parents were in between shuls, she helped organize an independent prayer group. She co-chaired the New Hampshire chapter of J Street for a decade, took multiple trips to Israel, and at Temple Israel in Portsmouth, chaired the Israel Affairs Committee. She volunteered with the chevra kadisha, the Jewish burial society, helping prepare people’s bodies for burial. This past fall she and my dad received the Shem Tov award from the Jewish Federation of New Hampshire for outstanding community service.

Nahanni: I asked you about challenges, but what about some of the biggest rewards?

Emma: Well, being able to host family holidays. So that was… and Grandma said to me after one of our second seders, "Now I know I don’t have to worry about who’s going to carry this on."

Nahanni: Wow.

Emma: Very gratifying.

Nahanni: That must have felt like a real affirmation.

Emma: Yes. Yeah, it was wonderful. Yeah.

Nahanni: At what point in your life do you think you started feeling like a Jewish woman, a Jewish person?

Emma: Oh, that’s a really good question. I’m always feeling like I’m passing [laughs]. I am. I mean, you know, there are these stories about how someone thought Walter was the one who wasn’t Jewish.

Nahanni: I’ve never heard those stories!

Emma: Oh no, some…Shortly after I converted, we were both at Rabbi Gold’s house and some friends of his came in, we left, and they asked him, was that a mixed marriage? And he said yes. And they said, "I thought so. I didn’t think he looked Jewish." [both laugh]

So he told us that story and that was funny. And then when we got involved in Dover, people definitely assumed I was Jewish. And I often felt like I knew more about being Jewish than they did.

Nahanni: You had studied.

Emma: Yeah.

Nahanni: Lots of people don’t.

Emma: I know, I know. And I had Walter’s family, you know, as an example. But I always still felt like, oh yeah, I’m sneaking by. If I get called up to do an aliyah, I’m a nervous wreck. And playing the role I played on the Israel committee always felt like, you know, this isn’t because I’m a convert.

Nahanni: You mean your kind of left-wing stance on Israel—

Emma: No, she’s not really Jewish or she wouldn’t feel this way.

Nahanni: Oy.

Emma: But the thing is…the interesting thing is the most conservative guy on that committee was also a convert [both laugh]. And I said to Harvey Sitkoff once, "So what does that tell you?

Nahanni: Interesting. Well, what does that tell you?

Emma: That it’s not because I converted, I guess.

Nahanni: Yeah. But also that people who convert can take real leadership positions.

Emma: Oh, that too. Yeah. Yeah, that too.

Nahanni: I mean, you’ve been Jewish for much longer in your life than you haven’t.

Emma: I’ve thought of that many times. I’ve even thought of it when it was kind of at the equal balance point. Yeah. 

I think the chevra kadisha tradition is beautiful. We should talk about that sometime and what to do with me. There are wonderful things in Judaism.

Nahanni: You participated…

Emma: I volunteered for the committee. I participated three or four times. It was holy work. I felt like it was so important to do.

Nahanni: On the sort of seismic chart of your life of eventful things, where do you think converting to Judaism fits?

Emma: Yeah. Well, it’s kind of foundational, you know, it’s like, it just bolsters my values and… and you asked me if I really identified Jewishly. I think I do, in spite of this sort of lingering feeling that I’m not quite one of them. I think it’s really foundational.

I have no regrets about having converted. None at all. I mean, I think the rewards of seeing the life you live is very validating. And the things we’ve kept going as a family—I mean, that feels important to me.

Nahanni: You said that sometimes you still feel like you’re passing, but are there times when you don’t feel like that?

Emma: I guess I feel like I’m still someone learning to be Jewish. Yeah. But I have thought, you know, if Dad weren’t here, would I go back? No, definitely not. I’m Jewish for good. It’s my home.

Nahanni: My mother died—at home—on February 1. My daughter and I, my father, brother, and cousin had sung Kabbalat Shabbat at her bedside on Friday night and she died just a few hours later. During shiva, I reflected on the choice she made to become a Jewish woman, which shaped not only the rest of her life, but mine.

I had always thought that my mother converted to marry my dad, and that is certainly part of the story. But as she articulated so clearly, this was a choice she made. She dove into Judaism wholeheartedly, and was always learning, right up until the end of her life.

Emma Rous, Eema Rachel bat Avraham v’Sarah, died at age 80 in Durham, New Hampshire, surrounded by her family.

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Nahanni: Thank you for listening to Can We Talk?, the podcast of the Jewish Women’s Archive. Our team includes Jen Richler and Judith Rosenbaum. Our theme music is by Girls in Trouble. Find us online at jwa.org/canwetalk, or wherever you get your podcasts.

This Mother’s Day, I wish us all a day of reflection and appreciation for the mothers and mother-figures who have shaped our lives.

I’m Nahanni Rous. Until next time.

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