also I don’t know if you’re a doctor who person or not but like... Jewish donna noble and Jewish Bill Potts are my life
I’ve never seen anything with Bill because I’m skipping 12 bc s.moff can bite me buuut
Her grandfather loves Christmas so much, and Donna would, she used to, but it all feels off now. Something she can’t really place, like something’s missing.
So when she meets Shaun Temple, when they start dating, when she finds out that he’s Jewish, she learns as much about it as she can.
She doesn’t start small–she goes with him to High Holiday services, making her debut. She asks if she can wear a kippah, even if it’s supposed to be for men, and she lets Shaun teach her the blessing for the tallit she throws around her shoulders, even though her tongue stumbles over the Hebrew.
She jumps headfirst into that, too, buying a program and immersing herself in the language. She wants to know the prayers, she wants to know the culture, she wants to be able to read those little letters with those little dots that sound so pretty from Shaun’s mouth.
And she loves him, she really does, but she falls in love with Judaism as she’s falling in love with him, and it’s all tied together in an inextricable knot.
She converts as fast as she possibly can, as fast as the Rabbi will let her. She knows it’s a process, and she loves the process, but she needs this. She needs it.
Donna doesn’t do anything by half-measures, and she barrels head-first into Shaun’s synagogue, marveling at how the congregation welcomes her with open arms and open hearts. How they don’t put her down, they don’t think she’s stupid or that she hasn’t done anything with her life. How they let her on committees and share their family recipes and invite her and Shaun into their homes.
And as she sits next to Shaun in the warmth of the Synagogue at Shabbat one dark, cold, blustery Friday night, she feels like maybe that emptiness that’s always inside her maybe can be filled. That maybe the lingering feeling at the back of her head–the one that sings of the stars–can be filled up with the music of the prayers, with the warmth of the community.
Maybe the loss she feels, the loss that fills her up for no reason she can find, can be stemmed by the love taking over: love for the man she’s going to marry, and for the religion that feels like coming home.
