The road to becoming Jewish may be taken for the sake of marriage or as an act of faith. Whatever the initial reason, it brings with it a profoundly changed life.

David Franks, an attorney in Davenport, Iowa, was raised on his family’s farm in nearby Port Byron, Illinois.

His mother was born in the farmhouse, his grandparents founded the local church and his ancestors are buried in its cemetery down the road. Since the 1800’s, the 230-acre farm has been home not only to hundreds of Black Angus cattle, chicken and sheep but to over two centuries of the family’s Christmas dinners. Today, Franks’s parents still reside on the property, tend crops and attend their Methodist church. Franks and his wife, Katie, recently built their own house on the farm—with a mezuza gracing each doorpost and shadows from Shabbat candles illuminating the cornfields every Friday night. They live there with sons Isaac, 7, and Ben, 4.

“I have always had a strong belief in God because of my relationship to nature,” explains Franks, 46, “but Christianity was like a pair of shoes that just didn’t fit and Judaism was the old pair that felt really comfortable.” He began studying Judaism nearly 20 years ago while attending the University of Iowa Law School as a way to better understand his Christian upbringing.

David and katie franks are jews-by-choice. they are among thousands whose journeys are unique, though their paths tends to be paved with common themes: an appreciation for Jewish values and faith, a sense of belonging and what some call “the click”—the process of everything coming together intellectually and spiritually. At the same time, making such a life transformation can be difficult and complicated, especially because of family connections.

“The break with my family tradition was hard because I am very close with them,” says Franks. “They are wonderful people, but the last time I did Communion I remember looking around at everybody and thinking, ‘I don’t belong here.’ I have no criticisms for Christianity. It’s just not for me.”

Like her husband, Katie Franks’s path was long but thoughtful. The daughter of a half-Jewish father whose family was victimized by the Nazis, her surviving relatives moved from Germany to the United States, renounced Judaism and adopted the religion of their spouses.

“We were a family of Baptists, Lutherans, Protestants, and everyone learned how to get along and accept [different] beliefs,” says Katie, 41, who was raised attending a Protestant church in the Davenport area. She began attending Shabbat services and the local Hillel as a student at Drake University in Des Moines.

“Whenever I went to church with family and friends, I always felt guilty—like the heathen of the world,” she recalls. “I’d think ‘Why don’t I get this?’ I never understood the holy Trinity thing. Once I found the faith that matched my belief system, it was as if this huge burden had been lifted from my shoulders.”

The Franks and their sons were ultimately converted through the Reform movement.

For others, becoming a jew was less the culmination of a lifelong search and more like a wholly unexpected curveball. That’s how it was for Christine (Tina) Horii, who was a Radio City Music Hall Rockette and Broadway dancer when she met a Jewish television commercial producer named Todd Factor in late 1997. When they began to date seriously, he mentioned that Judaism was important to him. Her response: “If you want a Jewish wife, date and marry a Jewish woman.

“I had just come to a place in my life where after 30 years of searching I had finally accepted who I was as a Japanese American woman,” explains the 37-year-old, whose name today is Rachel Factor. “I was just starting to love myself and feared becoming Jewish would take away my identity and everything I had come to embrace. But [Todd and I] had a deep connection and it was not easy for me to walk away, so I decided to collect information.”

After reading several books on Judaism, Factor found her own values to be in line with Jewish values. She connected with the idea of pluralism and that one question could have many answers—sometimes diametrically opposed yet both truthful. She loved the “brilliant and progressive way” Judaism embraced life and its complexities. But did agreeing with Judaism intellectually and philosophically mean she had to convert? Absolutely not, she told herself.

Still, Factor, who was raised in Hawaii, enrolled in a class in an Upper West Side Conservative synagogue that encouraged the exploration of kashrut and Shabbat. She took the instructor’s suggestion and made a Shabbat dinner date with Todd, preparing the meal and setting the table.

He was an hour and a half late, leaving her alone at candle-lighting time. Though initially infuriated by his tardiness, the experience of candle lighting alone became one of her most life-defining experiences.

“Because I was in the moment, alone,” she recalls, “I was able to ask myself, ‘If it’s not as important to him, is it still important to me? Was I just doing it for him? If so, that’s not a reason to [convert].’ And it was at that moment…when [the idea of converting] jumped from being intellectual to my whole being wanting [to be Jewish]…. He finally made it to dinner and together we created Shabbos. No phones, no televisions, we spoke, we connected, we said blessings, asked Hashem to join us. We created something that was missing from our lives.”

Factor converted with a Conservative rabbi in New York shortly before their wedding in 2000. Two years later, the birth of their son, Ariel, moved the couple so deeply that they began exploring Orthodox Judaism.

“Creation had always been so important to me as a performer—creating a dance, a song, a theater piece—but I realized creating a child was true creation; I felt a huge spiritual connection,” says Factor, who penned the one-woman show, J.A.P., about her experience as a Japanese American who becomes a Jew, and has performed it throughout the United States and Israel.

In 2003, Factor underwent an Orthodox conversion and the family made aliya. Today, the Factors—including a second son, Shalom—live in Morasha, just outside the Old City. She changed her name to Rachel and began observing the rules of modesty, covering her hair and the dancer’s body she once paraded “wearing not much!” across the Broadway stage. Todd became Tovia and he now studies in a yeshiva when not promoting J.A.P. or running B’nos Miriam, the arts center they cofounded as an outlet for creative expression through dance, music, theater and art for observant girls and women (www. rachelfactor.com).

At some point in the process, many non-Jews who are introduced to Judaism by a Jewish partner experience their own epiphany, asking, “Am I doing this for me because it is what I believe or simply to gain acceptance?”

Martha Swiller’s moment came when she began feeling very much alone while taking classes at the University of Judaism in Los Angeles to prepare for her conversion.

“[My fiancé,] Ari, was insisting that I become Jewish,” recalls the 39-year-old executive vice president for Planned Parenthood in Los Angeles. “But for him, Saturday mornings were reserved for basketball. It was as if becoming Jewish was just something I had to get done, and once I was Jewish I wouldn’t have to do any of the [rituals] again. I felt like I had to pass a test to be good enough for his family and for him.”

It was Swiller’s own family and the Orthodox rabbi overseeing her conversion who made her question her intentions. But as she learned more, she realized she loved Judaism’s emphasis on family, on performing mitzvot, on tzedaka, and she found fulfillment in many of the rituals, particularly Shabbat dinner. Yes, she realized she was doing this for Ari and his family, but it was also for herself.

The couple married in September 1997, a month after her trip to the mikve. They now have two young daughters and, though Martha had an Orthodox conversion, today the family belongs to a Conservative congregation. And while they aren’t regular shul-goers—“I’d rather invest my time and energy in making a Shabbat dinner and having family time than chasing a 2-year-old and 4-year-old around synagogue,” she says—they are fixtures on the High Holidays and often help make a minyan. As for kashrut, their home is “kosher in spirit,” she says.

Determining a comfortable level of religious observance for two people of different backgrounds—even when both are born Jews—can require great patience and negotiation. Choosing to convert as a single person may lack the tension of compromise but it poses its own challenges.

Leah Jones, a 29-year-old Chicago public relations associate, is behind the blog “Leah in Chicago: Accidentally Jewish” (www.leahj.blogcity. com) where she expounds on her social and spiritual experiences as a single Jew-by-choice. Subjects on her site include “Dating Jewish” and “Let’s Talk About Sex, Rabbi.”

Though she admits to occasionally wondering whether she should have waited to find a Jewish husband before converting, she is secure in her decision. “I’d rather be a single Jewish woman than just a single woman,” says the Indiana native, whose interest in Judaism was sparked three years ago by a short-lived crush on a Jewish man. Though she never actually dated him, she became curious about Judaism and started to read books to see what it was all about.

She describes her reading and studying as well as a trip she made to Israel last March as a spiritual homecoming that continues to help her “discover meaningful and important ways to be in a community, relate to God, grow as a person and in spirit.

“Once you find that, it would be foolish not to embrace it,” Jones adds, explaining why she converted. Today, she is a regular at Chicago’s Emanuel Congregation. She keeps “biblical kosher,” she explains, not eating pork or shellfish or mixing meat and dairy.

To her dismay, Jones has had dismissive comments posted on her Web site and said to her by Jews who are more observant than she. She has been told that her Reform conversion was a farce, that she has been “duped” and will never be a “real” Jew.

Still, reaction to her conversion has been overwhelmingly positive among family and friends. And she has been warmly welcomed by her Reform congregation—a community she considers extended family.

The support of loved ones is an invaluable resource during a time that can be as emotionally trying as it is rewarding. Katie Franks tears up when recounting a conversation she had with her father about her interest in Judaism. “My decision to convert came primarily from a discussion with my dad right before he passed away from colon cancer,” explains Franks, who is celebrating her 15th wedding anniversary this fall by renewing her wedding vows under a huppa at Reform Temple Emmanuel in Davenport—where the family had converted in 2004.

“He was very open-minded and said, ‘You can’t get along in this world without having faith and [you] need to do what is best for your family and forget everyone else,’” she recalls. “‘You’ve been exploring this for 20-something years. Go where your beliefs meet the faith.’”

Telling his parents was harder for David. He remembers his mother cautioning him that “there are some people who don’t like Jews. Do you really want to put your children in that situation?” It was a reaction of fear, he explains, but she has since come to terms with it, as has his father.

“It takes a lot of internal conflict and struggle,” he says about the process of accepting that the religion you were born into is not a perfect fit. “But now I know what the meaning of shalom is. I have that inner peace.”

Jones wholly concurs.

“For me, Judaism was coming home,” she says, “and going to Israel …was like walking through the front door of my mom’s house. There is something in my soul and in my DNA that knows this is where I belong.”