Building My Judaism — Manuel Gauto

Today’s episode is a Shabbat Replay of our service on August 7th, when we celebrated our graduating BluePrint students who explored Judaism this past year, many of them going on to choose conversion. We heard a drash from BluePrint graduate Manuel Gauto the allure of Judaism and how Mishkan has become a spiritual home. If Mishkan is your home, we encourage you to help us secure its future by joining or renewing your Buildership today.

https://www.mishkanchicago.org/builder-drive-2026/

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For upcoming Shabbat services and programs, check our event calendar, and see our Accessibility & Inclusion page for information about our venues. Follow us on Instagram and like us on Facebook for more updates. To support Mishkan's important work of creating radically inclusive, down-to-earth, inspired Judaism, we invite you to join as a Builder or donate today.

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Produced by Mishkan Chicago. Music composed, produced, and performed by Kalman Strauss.

Transcript

Transcript

Hello Everyone! Shabbat Shalom. 

My name is Manuel Gauto and I am a recent graduate of Mishkan’s Blueprint program. I am so honored to have the opportunity to be up here today as a freshly-mikveh’d member of the community along with some wonderful people that I have had the chance to meet along the way. 

When looking at this week’s portion, what resonated with me was the idea of building a home for yourself and the people you love. It is especially interesting considering that this portion is right after Tisha B’av where we remember a loss of home. Early Jewish life revolved around the Temple and naturally without it, fundamental questions around identity arise (enter Rabbinic Judaism). This time of year, as our parashah notes, presents us with both blessings and curses. We remember what we have lost while we simultaneously read about Moses preparing our people to enter the Promised Land and celebrate those that have converted. This would be a great analogy for my journey as a convert.

But no, we are not going to talk about that (yet)! We are ACTUALLY going to talk about how moving is the LITERAL worst. It is not just because of the physical act of moving your belongings. It involves so much more than that. It disrupts how you get places, what you eat, where you shop, and what you do. Sometimes, depending on how far or why you move, it can be a lot more than that. It can mean that you need to find new hobbies, new friends, or even a new sense of what makes you, you. I experienced all of that when I moved here to Chicago just over two years ago. While I did not need to cross a desert to get here (just Ohio), I did come here with the promise of a new beginning and an opportunity to build a home that encouraged me to be the version of myself that I wanted to be. Along the way, I feel that I learned some valuable lessons about what home really means and what it takes to make one.

Now, why all this hustle and bustle about moving and finding a home? Unfortunately, with a name like Manuel Gauto and an immigrant family, exclusion has been a part of my life from the very beginning. I have consistently existed in a liminal space where I could not quite fully own either side of my identity. I have always been a bit different from my parents, my siblings, and my broader Latino community for a variety of reasons. I spoke English well but confusingly, I also spoke Spanish well. But with not the same accent as everyone since I studied the language at University (which led to the half-kind, half-mean nickname of Professor among my family’s friends). I wanted to fit in with the community that my parents had built but I did not quite feel like I fit and the community itself did not really treat me like I fully belonged either.

But, I was SO American in some ways. Second generation Paraguayan. I managed to go to school, master the language, get a good job, and build a good life. “The American Dream”. But on the other hand, I was not quite like everyone I met at school or at work. I had to do so many things on my own. My family did not know how to help me with my homework, my paperwork, or how to navigate the professional environment. My childhood was not like the childhood of my friends. Little things too. Like, my friend’s parents would talk to me and my family just a bit slower and with a bit more enunciation, just to be polite. People would be so surprised when I accomplished something. Maybe a bit too surprised. So I was not really 100% comfortable diving into that part of my identity.

After some wrong turns and a lot of right turns, I ended up here in Chicago. 

As part of my journey here in Chicago (and as most stories go), I met a girl and she was Jewish. I realize now that the first months of me dating her was basically Jewish preschool. We had our first Shabbat dinners and broad overviews of Jewish theology (thank you Gillian). Those first experiences began a Jewish journey that brought me to Mishkan and eventually to Blueprint. One of the questions that I had from the start was “Am I doing this for me? Am I really choosing this?”. The interesting thing is that from the very beginning I already kind of knew that I was going to end up converting. 

I remember speaking with one of my closest friends about the growing role of Judaism in my life and she said to me “it already sounds like you have decided to convert”. It was an interesting moment for me because it made me realize that I felt a certain amount of inevitability around the conversion process. The more I learned about Judaism, the more I wanted to learn.  There were so many things about it that I loved from the very beginning. I was allowed (and encouraged) to ask questions. I was allowed to build a Judaism that felt true to me. And it gave me the opportunity to build something that pushed me toward becoming the type of person I want to be for my loved ones, my community, and myself.

Late last year, I found myself in one of those periods of life where everything seems to be going sideways and none of your plans for figuring it out are… ya know.. working. I got to a pretty rough spot and I found myself reaching for Judaism not out of curiosity but for comfort and safety. It was a very important moment for me because I had never looked to my faith for those things before. I realized that Judaism was there for me and giving me something that I had been searching for for a long time. There was something in Judaism that felt like home even when I could not find comfort elsewhere. It was becoming not only a faith I was choosing, but a home I could return to. In one of the darker periods of my life, all I wanted was Shabbat Dinner. Because it was Friday and that is what I did on Fridays.

Naturally, as my journey progressed, another question emerged: Would this community accept me? While I felt firm in my choice, I worried about how I would be seen. Would this new home receive all of me, or would I once again find myself in a liminal space, belonging but never quite belonging completely?

 I ended up speaking to half the Rabbis in Chicago about my fears around not ever being Jewish enough to be Jewish, too Jewish to be not Jewish, and also everything that comes with being a Latino-American. I had fundamental questions around what parts of Jewish identity I was entitled to carry myself even if I did convert and how the community would treat me in response to that. 

Now, watch this tie-in: the Torah reading for this week starts with “See, I am setting before you today [a] blessing and curse.” Interestingly, the grammar of the original Hebrew of this section actually provides a commentary on acceptance as it moves between the individual and the community. Re’eh (See) is singular and addressed to the individual while lifneichem (leaf nay chem) (Before you) is addressed to the plurality of the Jewish community. It speaks to a bidirectional choice that must occur in every human relationship, especially communal ones.  It is a beautiful connection to the position that we converts are placed in. A convert makes an individual choice to join the Jewish people. But conversion also places a choice before the community: Will we fully receive, include, teach, honor, and love the person who has chosen us? 

The reading also has something to say about this! It speaks not just to basic acceptance but to who can partake in celebrations of Jewish joy. Deuteronomy 16:11 does not say “If they are Jewish, they can party with us” it says “You shall rejoice before the ETERNAL your G-d with your son and daughter, your male and female slave, the Levite in your communities, and the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow in your midst.” 

For me, the answer to the question “What can I take on as a convert?” was right there. The Torah imagines Jewish joy as something shared across the community, including with the stranger living in its midst. I was not being invited to stand nearby and watch Jewish life happen. Even (or perhaps especially) as a convert, I was being invited to participate fully in the blessings, responsibilities, celebrations, and even the curses that come with being Jewish.

Now look at me (look at us). While I cannot say I have figured it all out, I am thankful that I found Mishkan. This community has provided so much warmth, acceptance, and growth to both me as a person and to my Judaism. I can confidently say that I have found something that I can call home and that the community around it has made me feel chosen in return.

I think one of the many things I have learned on this journey is that belonging requires a choice in both directions. A person may choose a community, but a community only becomes a home when it fully welcomes the person who has chosen it. I will challenge everyone here, myself included, to very genuinely keep up the good work.

To me, this is a core part of tikkun olam. This community has done a great job helping me feel at home and it is our duty to extend the warmth, acceptance, and understanding that this community is capable of to everyone in our lives day to day. Everyone here is capable of approaching interactions with curiosity rather than negativity as you have done with me. Let’s keep doing that. Let’s make understanding our goal rather than complete agreement. Let’s make sure that we choose people back so that they can experience that same sense of belonging and extend it to the next person.