Choosing to Be Chosen: From Being an Atheist Non-Jew to Becoming an Orthodox Jew

Choosing to Be Chosen is journalist Kylie Ora Lobell’s journey from a broken, secular Christian home, to teenage atheism, to a chance encounter with a lapsed Jewish stand-up comedian—culminating in a spiritual quest for conversion to Orthodox Judaism.

Kylie Ora Lobell grew up in a typical American home: religiously lukewarm, where they only went to church on Christmas and Easter. Though she believed in God when she was a child, after her parents’ divorce and her grandmother’s untimely death,...