How I got started(Or: an experience with G-d it's hard not to laugh at)

Let me first say, that though my parents tried to raise me to be a Conservative jew, for most of my life I've been an agnostic shading towards atheist. Secondly, I am now actively practising(Is that word spelled correctly?) Judaism, despite a short stint in the army. Why the change? Well, that's the interesting part. . . .

In June of 2004, my family moved to Israel, taking me with them. I was pretty mad about it at first(I loved our cabin in Vermont), but Israel's too beautiful a place to hate for long and I grew to love the country.

Anyway, to make a long story short, after jaunting about the country a bit, we wound up on a small farm in the Negev. 12 kilometres from Gaza city, but that's another story.

On January 7th, 2007, I woke up, and I was mad at the entire world; I hated everything. If you had handed me a control pad with a button warning: 'don't press this button, or the world will be destroyed.' I'd have pressed the button.

But anyhoo. For some reason, I felt the urge to go somewhere. Not just out of the house, but somewhere specific, I didn't know where.

So I said to my dad; "Is there anything we need from the Makolet(convenience store)?"

"No." He replied.

I grunted and walked towards the kitchen, stopped. "I'm going out." I said, and did so.

For some reason, just saying the word, 'Makolet' aroused a terrible urge in my mind to go there. "Why do I want to go there for?" I demanded of myself. "There's nothing I want there!" Nevertheless, the urge mounted.

"All right!" I said at last. "I'll start walking toward the gate(A small farming village close to Gaza? Of cource there's a wall around it. But then, the gate's always open, and the Makolet's in the next village, about a mile down the road. That's Israel for you) and if I think of something I want from the Makolet, I'll go there."

I walk to the gate, and the open road seems to call me, and the urge to go to the Makolet grows stronger than ever. "All right!" I say aloud. "I'll take a walk by Kfar Maimon(The next village) and if I think of anything I want from the Makolet, I'll go there."

So I walk down the road, and as I near the gates of Kfar Maimon. The urge grows ever more. "All right!" I shout. "I'll go to the Makolet, and if I see anything I want, I'll get it!"

So I do.

I arrive at the Makolet, and I don't see anything I want. I go through the whole place twice. Nothing. "Search one more time." Something said to me. I swear, I heard it in my ear. So I do.

I find on a shelf, bags of onion rings that I could have sworn had never been there before. And suddenly, I wanted those onion rings so bad, my mouth watered. "Wait." Something said to me again. "You want to get something with these."

So I look through the whole store again. And again. Nothing. 'Till I glance over by the door, and two coolers virtually appear before my eyes. I walk over and my eyes immediately light upon a bottle of orange juice. "Get that." Something tells me. So I do.

I got the onions rings, I got the OJ(Not Simpson) and I walked across the road to the small park across from the Makolet. I sit on the bench there and I munch a handful of of onion rings and sip some orange juice- and I was ta peace with the world, with every bite of onion rings and every sip of OJ, I was inhaling bliss. . . .

About a week later, I was washing dishes in the kitchen when a lightbulb came on in my head. Really, it was that sudden, I wasn't even thinking about it. "My G-d!" I exclaimed. "My G-d just spoke to me!"

I immediately renounced my atheist ways. I looked through several religions, became a Quaker(still am, though not a very good one) and returned to the US to enlist in the army.

Staying with my sister, a shaman, I was set upon by a shade that tried to kill me.

I enlisted in the army, got discharged, and came back to my sister's, where she introduced me to some former lives o' mine, but through it all, I'm still the jew I became that day.

I am not so presumptious as to think it was G-d speaking directly to me, but surely, nothing less than an Angel could have guided my steps so well that day.