Personal Statement

[TalA307]

Hi! I don't know if this is the appropriate forum, but I figure it can't hurt to try so if anyone feels like taking the time to read this draft of my personal statement, I'd really appreciate any insights! Especially with respect to the last couple lines - I feel like I might be taking it a bit too far lol
thanks!

Personal Statement:

I have had the exceptional opportunity to live two entirely different lives before reaching the middle years of my expected lifetime. Raised half the week by a mother whose love for me was rivaled only by her devotion to the Jewish religion, I was profoundly and passionately dedicated to my quasi-intellectual Judaic beliefs. This dedication led me to Israel, the Holy Land promised to my forefathers and bequeathed unto me. I wholeheartedly believed it was God's will that I leave my family behind for the Promised Land, and so with little hesitation, I began studying at a prestigious Israeli yeshiva before enlisting in the Israeli army.  

It was in the military that I began to realize I had a profoundly terrifying problem: I was not attracted to the opposite sex. Though I fought it, I had known from a very young age that I was attracted to other men. This was, for me, not terribly alarming - after all, religion oftentimes demands that its constituents refrain from engaging in a wide variety of 'lustful' activities, and I believed that my attraction to men could be conquered much as I had conquered my very real attraction to pork and cheeseburgers. But to demand that I somehow evoke the sexual attraction necessary for building a healthy family with a woman? This was something I didn’t know how to accomplish, and it was my greatest failure.

After returning to my yeshiva in the hopes of obtaining rabbinic ordination, I began to participate in the sociologically fascinating process of shidduchim, matchmaking. The dating life of a serious yeshiva student could scarcely be more dissimilar to that of the quintessential millennial. For one thing, dating is undertaken for the explicit and exclusive purpose of finding a spouse; for another, no physical contact is permitted prior to the wedding whatsoever (which, needless to say, was something of a relief in my case).

Desperate to marry, I dated nine girls over the course of a single year. Ironically, it was my unofficial engagement to a young woman that gave me the courage to reveal my homosexuality for the first time. I could lie to myself, you see, but I couldn’t let someone else live with the consequences of my own fabrication. The marriage was thankfully called off and upon learning of my “ugly problem,” my Rebbe tearfully suggested that I see a psychologist who was "an expert in dealing with this issue."

A year and a half later, I had spent most of my savings on conversion therapy, yet I still couldn’t see the appeal of breasts. Fortunately, I knew that I no longer needed to; a few months after I began seeing the aforementioned ‘expert,’ I stumbled upon a book entitled The Hidden Book in the Bible. Upon reading it, I was exposed to the Documentary Hypothesis of Biblical criticism, a heretical theory that provides an intellectually superior means of examining the Bible. For the first time in my life, my religious convictions were shaken to their core and, truth be told, I don’t know if I would have embraced this edifying new perspective had it not been for my sexual orientation. Though my intellect was persuaded, the prospect of forsaking the beliefs upon which I had predicated my entire life was almost as horrifying as spending it in the closet. Erudition merely gave me license to relinquish my religion; it was being gay that gave me reason to do so.

Nevertheless, leaving the self-imposed restrictions of religion was as unimaginably liberating as one might imagine. The modern world was all very new, very difficult, and extremely intriguing. Cliché as it may sound, I transformed. Dreams of piety and religious zeal morphed into aspirations of academic achievement and social accomplishment; struggles with sexual sin were replaced with challenges of body image and navigating through an unfamiliar society. I discovered my prodigious love of travel, sex, culture, and, above all, people. Where I previously eschewed meeting gentiles and irreligious Jews, I was now fascinated by their stories and perspectives. I learned to embrace the diversity that comes with being human, and in doing so, I learned to embrace myself.

Armed with my shiny new outlook and no longer bound to the demands of some unyielding deity, I was finally free to make of myself whatever I wanted. The only problem, of course, is that I had very little idea what that might be. In fact, it was only in the final semester of my undergraduate studies that I realized I had been craving the constant intellectual stimulation provided by my former religion. Study of the Torah and Talmud is well-known for its intellectual rigor, and though my courses were academically challenging, their intellectual demands hardly required the mental fitness I had developed in yeshiva.

Perhaps it will be less surprising, then, when I share that a chance encounter with the LSAT is what ultimately led me to law school. Flipping through logical reasoning questions, I was struck by formidable nostalgia - here were the same reasoning patterns I had come to love in my Talmudic studies. The LSAT proved to be as thrilling a challenge as any Talmudic passage, and the more I delved into it, the more intrigued I became by the prospect of attending law school. Here was a career that could satisfy my need for intellectual stimulation, financial stability, and social contribution.

It has since become my greatest hope to attend New York University. To be part of a prestigious institution that is both in and of the city, so proudly aware of its geographical significance in terms of both culture and profession, would be the greatest shidduch of both my lives.

[ohthatpatrick]

Yeah, we LSAT moderators don't comment on this sort of thing, but you're welcome to put it out there and see what feedback you get.