Articles written by Leslie Contreras Schwartz

Leslie Contreras Schwartz, First person|Jul 29, 2016

(Kveller via JTA)—I was pregnant with my first daughter when I stood above the steps leading into the mikveh. After years of study, private and at a synagogue, and months of preparation, I was converting to Judaism. Naked and heavily pregnant, with my husband and rabbi standing in witness, the room was full of light and the still water before me. It was fitting and symbolic for me to be converting so close to delivering my first child. As a third-generation Mexican-American, I had grown up in a cultural limbo. I grew up in a mostly black and La...