oh my...

My very good friend from college just emailed me to let me know that she's thinking of converting to Judaism. She's been going to shul (her word) at a conservative place since August, and decided that if she's going to go through with it, she'll have an Orthodox conversion, so she's started to talk to a Chabad rabbi.

In some ways I'm pretty shocked (who would decide to take on all this ridiculousness consciously? I mean, I love being Jewish/religious and all, but if I had grown up differently, would I take it on by myself?), but in other ways, it makes sense. All her good friends were Jewish, she went out with a Jewish guy for a long time, her sensibilities have always been on the conservative side of things (we once went through basically every controversial topic and the only thing we disagreed about was capital punishment--I was going by what I'd been influenced with in HS and sem, she was going by her own perceptions).

Now I'll have no more non-Jewish friends left. I think I might need to make new friends. It gives perspective.