As a convert to Judaism, I enjoyed your book tremendously. It gave me the insider’s information I was lacking. I agree 100% with you: Jews coundn’t care less that someone wanted to convert to Judaism. I disagree with respect to the fact that, once you are converted you are highly regarded: actually, it is even worse than before. Converts are just like foregneirs here in the States: unwanted foreigners.
I would have titled your book My Christian Year
rather than My Jesus Year. The real Jesus is very much in the background. Isn’t he?
Yet, as Rabbi Boteach writes in a recent landmark article:”Jesus Christ is the most famous Jew of all time, but is today remembered as a Christian. Surprisingly, the Jewish community has accepted this distortion of history, and tends to regard Jesus as an apostate. How odd that the Jews would accept a Christian version of one of their brethren rather than seeking to discover the man entombed beneath the myth.”
Honestly, this is what I thought I would find in your book when I bought it: and I have not found it.
Here you have a tip for a second book:your Jewish brother Jesus, the man from Nazarteh, “steering away from both the deification of Jesus by Christians and his traditional Jewish caricature as an apostate, a magician and an enemy of the people of Israel” (Geaza Vermes, ‘The Authentic Gospel of Jesus”.
Looking forward to finding it on the shelves...next year...Natan