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One Person's Journey to Becoming A Baha'i

© Lloyd Madansky

I have been the Baha'i Contributing Editor for Suite101 for six months now, and I believe that my readers might want to know me better. Of course, there may be some that don't, and this article will be of no interest to them. That said, I do believe that knowing more about me and how I became a Baha'i might be of interest to some, so...here goes.

I was born in Hollywood, Ca., in January of 1947. While my parents were Jewish, they had decided to "pass" for non-Jews. This decision was based on the anti-Semitic sentiments that still existed at that time. Because of this, I did not find out that I was Jewish until I was 13 years old. My religious training up to this time was very limited. I had gone to whatever church my friends went to, although I always felt a little out of place. When I found out about my background, I started to look into what it meant to be Jewish, even though I continued to go to various Christian churches and youth organizations for social reasons. In high school, I was very active in the local chapter of Young Life, a Christian youth group with a focus on high school students.

I graduated from Burbank High School in June of 1964 and attended a local community college in the fall of that year. My worldview enlarged. I became involved in the Anti-War and the Civil Rights movements. I became exposed to Hindu, Buddhist and Taoist writings. I even experimented with "mind-expanding drugs." I did all I could to avoid the draft.

It was during this stage in my life that I began to find that many of the world's religious and spiritual teachings had much in common. Not that they had all the theological elements in common, but that there seemed to be a common thread that wove it all together.

I was finally drafted in September of 1966. My dog tags stated my religion as Jewish, but the first time I asked to see a chaplain (this was at Ft. Ord, Ca.) I was sent to a Christian minister, who I found to be condescending, at best. His idea of bonding was to ask if I was ashamed of being Jewish. He said that I shouldn't be - after all, he purchased his shirts from a Jewish store and had a Jewish tailor make his suits. I had no further contact with an army chaplain until spring of 1967, at Ft. Lewis, Wa. If it had not been for "The Teachings of the Compassionate Buddha" and "Zen Flesh, Zen Bones," I might not have kept my sanity during basic training. It was also at this time that I purchased my first deck of Tarot cards and so began my study into the occult.

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